Jeremy Corbyn thinks the State should do everything except its job - "Stop! Wait! Listen! Jeremy Corbyn has a new plan and you’re going to love it. Here’s the idea: scrap government spending on borders and spies and guns. Abolish expensive, anachronistic, neo-imperialist tat like bombs, passports and armies. And instead, invest in a national imagination. As John Lennon said, it’s easy if you try... The party’s problem is that every time Mr Corbyn has an opportunity to demonstrate his commitment to a fundamental aspect of British defence or security, he fluffs it. The charge sheet is long. Back in the autumn of 2015, he declared that he would never press the nuclear button under any circumstances. Shortly after that, he suggested that police shouldn’t ever use lethal force, even when lives are at stake. This summer, asked if he would go to war to defend a Nato ally who had been attacked, he prevaricated."
Halloween costumes to avoid wearing this year - "You might not consider foodstuffs to be particularly 'sexy' but one stockist in America is selling the 'sexy pizza' costume'. For $69 or £42 you can buy a pizza slice mini dress with filled crust shoulder pads. The pepper, pepperoni and olive pizza slice outfit does not look good enough to eat. The same site also sells a 'sexy french fries' costume and a 'sexy hamburger' costume "
The case against DNA - "Jamieson’s main concern about the growing use of DNA in court cases is that a number of important factors — human error, contamination, simple accident — can suggest guilt where there is none. Police and prosecutors, he alleges, have come to see DNA evidence as a shortcut to convictions, and juries are ill-equipped to understand the complex scientific data... “Does anyone realise how easy it is to leave a couple of cells of your DNA somewhere?” he asks rhetorically. “You could shake my hand and I could put that hand down hundreds of miles away and leave your cells behind. In many cases, the question is not ‘Is it my DNA?’, but ‘How did it get there?’"... he accused the police of being “fixated” on the DNA and failing to provide any other evidence... In the Amanda Knox trial, the Italian police presented virtually no other evidence that the 24-year-old American university student had murdered her English flatmate Meredith Kercher. With no obvious motive, no witnesses, no confessions and very little in the way of circumstantial evidence, the Italian prosecutors built a case almost entirely around the finding of Ms Knox’s DNA on the knife used to slash Ms Kercher’s throat. The defence was able to blow gaping holes in the case, demonstrating that the DNA samples could have been contaminated by stray DNA, misinterpreted, or have an innocent explanation. A damning review of the DNA evidence by a team of American experts suggested that it was mishandled and wrongly analysed... William Thompson, a criminologist specialising in DNA-based forensics at the University of California, criticises what he calls “the rhetoric of infallibility” surrounding DNA profiling”
Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown - "The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was full of unnecessary tautology. They said his prose was mired in a sea of mixed metaphors. For some reason they found something funny in sentences such as “His eyes went white, like a shark about to attack.” They even say my books are packed with banal and superfluous description, thought the 5ft 9in man. He particularly hated it when they said his imagery was nonsensical. It made his insect eyes flash like a rocket."
WWII flying ace Chuck Yeager in extraordinary attack on 'nasty' and 'arrogant' British people
Surgeons announce world’s first successful penis transplant - The Washington Post - "if everything is working physically, the psychological trauma can sometimes be too much to bear. That's what happened to the Chinese patient who could have been the first successful recipient: In 2006, 10 days after a physically successful surgery, the man asked doctors to remove his new organ... South Africa has a greater need for penis transplants than most of the world. Young men who are members of the Xhosa people often undergo ritual circumcision, sometimes in rural areas without proper instruments or sterilization. Complications from this practice lead to an estimated 250 penile amputations each year."
Americans don’t trust government. But they still want government to do a lot. - The Washington Post - "Americans hate government, but they like what it does."
In Europe, Fake Jobs Can Have Real Benefits - The New York Times - "Inside the companies, workers rotate through payroll, accounting, advertising and other departments. They also receive virtual salaries to spend within the make-believe economy. Some of the faux companies even hold strikes — a common occurrence in France. Axisco, a virtual payment processing center in Val d’Oise, recently staged a fake protest, with slogans and painted banners, to teach workers’ rights and to train human resources staff members to calm tensions. “The products and the money are fake, but you call a virtual firm in Switzerland and a person answers,” said Helene Dereuddre, 19, who was receiving administrative training at Candelia. “You call the bank and you get a counselor,” she said. “When you get into it, people see that they are capable of learning and working.”"
Why Are Student Protesters So Fearful? - The New York Times - "The victims too often present themselves as weak, in need of protection. Administrators are held, like helicopter parents, wholly responsible. To a veteran of movements of the ’60s like myself, this is strikingly strange... Too many students doubt that their community is, or can be, strong enough to stand up for itself, entertain arguments and strive to persuade opponents. The extremity of their reaction suggests that they lack confidence that reason and values are on their side... movements that change the world are the creations of confident people... there’s the West’s political narcissism, nourished in the post-Cold War period in which it really did seem that pluralist democracy was on the march. Such narcissism stripped us of the capacity to look critically at any actor whom we see inspired by our political model (bonus points if he or she writes political slogans in English). We assume that the imitation of Western practices and principles is a foolproof road to democratic success. There has also been a dangerous so-called normative turn in American political science. It reduced our understanding of complex social and global problems to a series of correlations that reassure us that, among other things, democracies do not fight one another, that democracy makes countries richer and less corrupt, and that every country is on its way to becoming, well, a democracy. Liberal teleology came to replace the Marxist one. Finally, we were seduced by the “Silicon Valley effect,” the fact that our ideas and strategies for social change were shaped less by historical experience and more by the utopian possibilities of the world of technology"
When Philosophy Lost Its Way - NYTimes.com - "Like the sciences, philosophy has largely become a technical enterprise, the only difference being that we manipulate words rather than genes or chemicals. Lost is the once common-sense notion that philosophers are seeking the good life — that we ought to be (in spite of our failings) model citizens and human beings. Having become specialists, we have lost sight of the whole. The point of philosophy now is to be smart, not good. It has been the heart of our undoing"
A Healthy Diet’s Main Ingredients? Best Guesses - The New York Times - "nutrition experts, including those in this Retro Report, caution that life is complex, and that we are more than what we eat... Other explanations for why one person gains weight and someone else does not may include sleep patterns, genetic predispositions and the compositions of individual microbiomes — the trillions of microbes residing inside the human body. Some health researchers even question the significance of exercise in keeping pounds off, regardless of its other benefits"
The Microcomplaint: Nothing Too Small to Whine About - The New York Times - "It was once considered unbecoming, or annoying itself, to moan publicly about trifling personal ordeals. Now, in a seismic shift for the moral culture, abetted by technology, we tolerate and even encourage the “microcomplaint”: the petty, petulant kvetch about the quotidian... the microcomplaint functions as a kind of reverse boast: You may be celebrating a new job or engagement with a Michelin-starred dinner, but look at how much I have suffered today — I’m deserving of more attention."
Why do Muslims play victims of free-speech but make excuses for apostasy and blasphemy? - "Non-Muslims in America want Muslims to respect values that neither favour nor prohibit the exercise of religion. Too often instead, they see acts of religious chauvinism that create a negative impression. For example, the Council of Islamic American Relations (CAIR) recently filed a discrimination lawsuit, as reported this September by CBS News, against an airline when a Muslim woman did not receive special accommodation. Prominent Muslims such as Mehdi Hasan refuse to unconditionally support free speech... Americans justifiably wonder why mainstream Muslims harbour such bigotry and claim victimhood, while they make excuses for extreme views such as apostasy, blasphemy laws and a culture responsible for the attack on Charlie Hebdo."
Judging the victim of a rape: Should we and why? - "We assume that, if a victim is blamed, that somehow lessens the culpability of the perpetrator. Why should that be so? Surely it is possible to critically and dispassionately acknowledge errors in judgment on the part of a victim without in any way justifying or excusing the acts of a predator... Everybody is, to a large extent, responsible for his or her own safety, whether from assault, fraud or lightning strikes. To suggest otherwise is, in my view, incomprehensible. Why then, does the conduct of a rape victim come under particular scrutiny? Certainly not, as Ms Rheaume suggests, because society expects women to take it upon themselves to shield themselves from the insatiable sexual appetites of men. Rather, rape belongs to a small category of crimes in which there is often close proximity between the victim and perpetrator prior to the commission of the crime. Around 2/3 of all rapists were known to their victims. It is in this context of proximity that the conduct of both parties is often examined to discern whether consent- the absence of which is a key element in a rape charge, was present. Conduct is therefore relevant, not for the purposes of apportioning blame, but in pursuit of the truth... the law recognizes that in certain cases, the conduct of the victim can be a factor in determining the culpability of the perpetrator. A murder charge may be reduced to culpable homicide if there was “grave and sudden” provocation emanating from the victim. There is a very real risk when we shy away completely from any discussion which touches on the conduct of a victim of rape. It suggests that rape is something over which a victim has no control. That it simply ‘happens’, much like being struck by a meteor while crossing an open field. The reality is somewhat different"
'Cucumbers grow better to rock music' - "Cucumbers like Rock music the most‚ and dislike Jazz... Not only do cucumbers love music‚ but they also show preferences for certain scents‚ despite having no conventional sensory receptors associated with smell (a nose)."
How Grown-Ups Deal With 'Microaggressions' - "If you establish a positive right to be free from alienating comments, it's hard to restrict that right only to people who have been victimized in certain ways, or to certain degrees. It's easy to say everyone has a right not to be alienated. It's also easy to say "you should only seek social or administrative sanction for remarks that are widely known and understood to be offensive slurs." It is very, very hard to establish a rule that only some groups are entitled to be free from offense -- because the necessary corollary is that it's fine to worry the other groups with a low-level barrage of sneers, and those groups will not take this lying down. The result will be proliferation of groups claiming victim status, attempting to trump the victim status of others... Complaints about microaggressions can be used to stop complaints about microaggressions. There is no logical resting place for these disputes; it's microaggressions all the way down. And in the process, they make impossible demands on members of the ever-shrinking majority: to know everything about every possible victim group, to never inadvertently appropriate any part of any culture in ways a member doesn't like, or misunderstand something, or make an innocent remark that reads very differently to someone with a different experience. Which will, of course, only hasten the scramble for members of the majority to gain themselves some sort of victim status that can protect them from sanction."
A Dying Man's Lost Recipe Made His Daughter a Multimillionaire - "Kushikatsu, a dish made by battering skewered meat and vegetables, deep-frying them and then dipping them in sauce, is common on the streets of Osaka, in the west of Japan’s main island, where Tanaka grew up. It’s less known in other parts of the country. The food originated as a quick, filling meal for laborers."
Magazine Shames People For Not Wanting to Have Sex With Transgender People, Says It’s Transphobic - "A liberal wonderland known as The Daily Beast (traffic down almost 40% in the last year) has complained about the latest totally-not-shocking survey showing most people wouldn’t want to date a transgender person, claiming it’s due to transphobia. Samantha Allen, a senior reporter for the site, who previously brought hits like the one decrying the LGBT community as racist for not wanting to have sex with people of color, has now deemed the people who don’t really want to date or have sex with a transgender person as “anti-transgender”. According to Allen, who cited a recent YouGov survey, less than 20% of Americans said they would “be open to dating a transgender person” – results which she termed “disappointing but unsurprising”."
Deconstructing the evidence-based discourse in health sciences: truth, power and fascism. - "Drawing on the work of the late French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, the objective of this paper is to demonstrate that the evidence-based movement in the health sciences is outrageously exclusionary and dangerously normative with regards to scientific knowledge. As such, we assert that the evidence-based movement in health sciences constitutes a good example of microfascism at play in the contemporary scientific arena. Objective The philosophical work of Deleuze and Guattari proves to be useful in showing how health sciences are colonised (territorialised) by an all-encompassing scientific research paradigm - that of post-positivism - but also and foremost in showing the process by which a dominant ideology comes to exclude alternative forms of knowledge, therefore acting as a fascist structure. Conclusion The Cochrane Group, among others, has created a hierarchy that has been endorsed by many academic institutions, and that serves to (re)produce the exclusion of certain forms of research. Because 'regimes of truth' such as the evidence-based movement currently enjoy a privileged status, scholars have not only a scientific duty, but also an ethical obligation to deconstruct these regimes of power."
Helping people live longer is fascist
Seattle Police Using Politically Correct Term 'Community Member' for Crime Suspect - "Seattle Police officers are no longer referring to a crime suspect as a “suspect” and instead use “community member” in reports in order to use less offensive and politically correct language."
Mike Pence Attacks Campus Safe Spaces, Students Stage Mass Walk-Out - "The local South Bend Tribune newspaper estimated that 150 people left, made up of roughly 50% students and 50% friends and family. Members of the university’s faculty gathered to congratulate the students who had walked out, according to the report. One, whose child walked out, paradoxically praised his daughter for her commitment to being “more inclusive” to political opponents, even as she demonstrated the opposite."
So much for dialogue and understanding
Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy - "I’d been asked to write a book about whatever I wanted, and this editor didn’t even know whether I’d written anything before. It didn’t matter. It would sell its 300 copies regardless. Not to people with an interest in reading the book, but to librarians who would put it on a shelf and then, a few years later, probably bury it in a storeroom... much of the time that goes into writing these books is made possible through taxpayers’ money. And who buys these books? Well, university libraries – and they, too, are paid for by taxpayers. Meanwhile, the books are not available for taxpayers to read – unless they have a university library card."
High Schooler Urges Admin to 'Strip Away Constitutional Protection' for Classmate Who Made Controversial Comedic Video - "His homemade campaign video, which the student briefly posted on Twitter in February, depicted terrorists abducting him from his bed (implying that he had been caught masturbating) and torturing him. The video also depicts several weapons"
Virginia Tech Students Protest Staircase by Blocking it Because it’s Not Accessible - "The problem with the stairs, however, is that they don’t have a ramp for disabled people—meaning disabled students have to use a route which takes about three minutes longer... Rather than channeling frustration into action to have more ramps built for disabled people, the activists blocked everyone from using the staircase and directed them to another route to ensure people “start thinking about access.” Martina Svyantek, a graduate student who co-chairs the disability and alliance caucus that organized the sit out, has questioned the point of building the stairs at all, if it can’t be used by everyone... Virginia Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski, however, noted that it was hard to build a ramp as the stairs are too steep and the hill has utility lines and steam tunnels"
"The difference between a SJW and an activist: An activist tries to get a ramp added to a building for easier wheelchair access. The SJW tries to get the stairs removed because they might offend people who can't use them." was supposed to be satire, not reality
Ben & Jerry's Refuses to Serve Two Scoops of Same Flavor in Australia Until Gay Marriage Is Legal
They should ban having 3 or more scoops period till polygamous marriage is legal
When you can't live without bananas
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
The male sexual deficit: A social fact of the 21st century
The male sexual deficit: A social fact of the 21st centuryInternational Sociology - Catherine Hakim, 2015
"This article reviews findings from some 30 sex surveys around the world showing that large and substantively important differences between men and women in the centrality of sexuality, sexual desire, sexual behaviour and attitudes persist in the 21st century, long after the contraceptive and sexual revolutions of the 1960s. Women’s lesser sexual motivation and interest means that many heterosexual men experience a shortfall in desired sexual activity. A reversal of the sex ratio to a male surplus among prime-age adults and other trends suggest that the sexual deficit among men may increase. The male sexual deficit (or surplus male sexuality) helps to explain sexual harassment, sexual violence, rape, rising demand for commercial sexual services and other behaviours that are almost exclusively male...
This article describes the sexual deficit among men (or surplus male sexuality), a phenomenon that appears to be universal in modern societies (Hakim, 2010, 2011: 38–73, 263–266). It emerged unexpectedly during research on sexual cultures, internet dating and marriage markets (Hakim, 2012). Yet feminists insist that men’s greater demand for sexual activity is an outdated myth. Recent sex surveys prove the myth to be a fact, one that the social sciences have yet to address, theoretically and empirically...
The feminist emphasis has been on ideological, moral and philosophical debates and theory (Jeffreys, 1997, 2005; Shrage, 1994; Soble, 2002; Walby, 1990: 109–127; Wittig, 1992), with a focus on male sexual harassment, violence and rape (Macdowall et al., 2013). Despite this, the idea of sex differences in sexuality is regularly challenged (Schmitt et al., 2012)...
The surveys show that the vast majority of men and women self-identify and act as heterosexuals: 97% in Britain, the USA, Australia, Scandinavia and Western Europe generally, whereas academic sexuality journals often focus on tiny sexual minorities...
Despite interest in all things sexual, no published sex survey report was found for Japan, although other surveys include questions on sexual topics...
People with liberal attitudes, an interest in sexuality and the sexually active are more likely to respond to sex surveys, so celibacy is usually understated in results (Dunne et al., 1997)...
The sex differentials in sexuality remain large, substantively important, and are found in all cultures, including the sexually liberated societies of Scandinavia. They cannot be dismissed as an outdated patriarchal myth as argued by feminists (Buss and Schmitt, 2011), especially as these national surveys were carried out long after the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Continuing sex differentials in sexuality in the 21st century include the following:
At all ages, the majority of women regard love as a precondition for sex, while a majority of men reject the idea (Sweden 1996).
•• Two-thirds of men accept, and two-thirds of women reject the idea of sexuality without love (France 1992). At all ages, men engage in sexual intercourse without any feelings of love two to four times more often than do women (Sweden 1996).
•• Men express two to ten times more enthusiasm than women for trying every variation in sexual activity.
•• The average number of sexual partners over a lifetime has fallen from two to three times higher among men to around 50%–100% higher today, so remains substantial.
•• When asked about their ideal sexual lifestyle, men are three times more likely to prefer several concurrent lovers: 20% vs 6% for women (Sweden 1996), 27% vs 7% for women (Estonia 2000).
•• Regular masturbation is two to three times more common among men, even among married men, and even in Sweden. A two-thirds majority of men masturbated in the last month, week or year compared to a one-third minority of women (Australia 2002, Finland 2007, Britain 2010).
•• Men are three times more likely to have frequent sexual fantasies, and to use erotica of all kinds. In Finland, a four-fifths majority of men find porn very arousing compared to half of women.
•• Two-fifths of men compared to one-fifth of women have an additional non-marital sex partner (Sweden 1996). Men report extra-marital affairs twice as often as women, even when they condemn affairs as morally wrong (Hakim, 2012). This pattern is observed both in villages and cities in China, where between one-quarter to half of divorces are now due to adultery. Only in France, Spain and Italy do men and women begin to converge in their acceptance (and practice) of affairs.
•• Casual sex was regarded as acceptable by a two-thirds majority of men vs a onethird minority of women in Britain in 1990. In 2010, twice as many men as women regarded one-night stands as ‘not wrong at all’: 18% vs 9%, or 20% vs 13% for people aged 16–44.
•• Around the world, customers for commercial sexual services and erotic entertainments are almost invariably male. Male prostitutes have more male than female clients. In Australia, 16% of men have paid for sex compared to 0.1% of women, with similar figures for Northern Europe. Across Northern Europe, men are equally or more likely to have sold sexual services. In Greece and Italy, around 40% of men have bought sexual services compared to less than 1% of women.
•• Men are four times more likely than women to always gladly agree to sexual approaches from their partner: 38% of men vs 11% of women (Finland 2007).
•• When asked about the ideal frequency of sexual activity, one-quarter of men but only 8% of women say they prefer sex at least once a day or more (Australia 2002). In Finland, men’s ideal frequency is around twice a week vs once a week for women.
•• Twice as many men as women experience frequent sexual desire: half vs one-fifth of women in Sweden.
•• One-third of women vs one in ten men have never had an erotic fantasy; one-third of men but only one in ten women have regular erotic fantasies (Italy 2000).
•• The most commonly reported sexual problem is lack of interest in having sex. In Australia, over half of all women report this compared to one-quarter of men. In all countries, the rate for women is at least double the rate for men, at all ages. In Finland, one-third of women but only 13% of men report lack of interest. Even in France, 8% of husbands compared to 41% of wives aged up to 45 years reported lack of desire as a problem in 1992.
A cross-cultural study of 29 countries shows that sex differences in desire and sexual interest are universal, but the gap between men and women is larger in male-dominated cultures than in liberal western societies...
The contraceptive revolution of the 1960s eliminated the fear of pregnancy among women – always a powerful demotivator (Cook, 2004; Szreter and Fisher, 2011). In the 1960s, over one-third of women with three or more children deeply regretted each new pregnancy (Cartwright, 1978). Yet sexual interest/desire seems to be surprisingly constant across generations. The 2010 British survey provides the most up-to-date information on sexual expression. It shows that in all age groups, females are more than twice as likely as men to lack interest in sex (Table 2). From their twenties onwards, one-third of women say they lack interest in sexual activity compared to one in seven men. They are also twice as likely to say they lack enjoyment in sex (12% vs 5% of men), but these are small minorities...
Despite a culture that welcomes female sexuality, French men and women are clear that male desire outweighs female sexual desire most of the time, and becomes the main driving force in longer-duration relationships, as women’s sexual desire wanes over time (Table 1). In Britain, among couples aged 25 and over, one-quarter of men and one-third of women report an imbalance in sexual interest with their partner in 2010. The imbalance is smallest in the 16–24 age group: 15% of young men and 20% of young women report the problem, and it grows thereafter (Mitchell et al., 2013: Table 3). Even in the 21st century, one-third of women report no sexual interest and/or an imbalance of sexual interest in a current relationship. From three different cultures, using different indicators, the patterns in Tables 1 and 2 and Figure 1 tell the same story...
The gap in sexual desire between men and women is growing over time...
Compared to countries in Africa south of the Sahara, sexual activity in Europe and North America remains a relatively rare entertainment, despite the ‘sexual revolution’. The frequency of intercourse within married couples is four to 18 times higher, on average, in certain African societies (Hakim, 2011: 64) and is also higher among ‘sexual superactives’, to use the label in the 1996 Swedish report (Lewin, 2000). Within Europe, sexual activity remains greater in Southern Europe than in sexually liberated Scandinavia (Hubert et al., 1998; Kontula, 2009: 127–129). In China, regular sexual activity is regarded as healthy and a psycho-physical need, rather than as a marital duty, so most couples report having intercourse weekly or more often. But frequencies are lowest in the big cities, especially Shanghai, where one in seven couples is celibate (Liu et al., 1997)...
The permanent sex difference in sexual interest and sexual exploration is shown also by sex differences that are substantially larger among homosexuals than among heterosexuals. Sex surveys show gay men (but not lesbians) to be much more active than heterosexual men, because the constraint of lesser female interest is removed. One indicator is the number of sexual partners in the last year, last five years, or ever. Among heterosexual men, numbers over a lifetime are typically in the range 10–11 compared to 17–35 for gay men. Maximum figures of 1000+ and 5000+ are reported for gay men vs 8–90 for lesbians (Leridon et al., 1998: Table 5.5; Messiah, 1998). American gay men report 200–300% more partners than lesbian women, and men are more likely than women to espouse the recreational-libertarian sexual ideology – 20% vs 14% (Laumann et al., 1994: 314–334)...
The second analysis incorporates data for another 86 countries, covering Africa, the Middle East, East Asia and Latin America as well as Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Between them, the two analyses cover publications over the 40 years from 1966 to 2007 – the period following the contraceptive revolution of the 1960s... Large and important differences between men and women persist in attitudes to casual sex, casual sex practice, pornography use and masturbation practice. Sexual desire or sexual interest are not studied directly, but these other measures reflect continuing differences in sex drive and motivation... Although men and women have similar attitudes accepting masturbation as normal rather than deviant, there are large differences in actual practice (average d = 0.96 in 1993, 0.53 and 0.58 in 2010) among white people, and smaller differences among black Americans. Solo sex is of special importance as an indicator of sexual desire, because there are no financial costs and no partner is required, so it is an ‘equal opportunity’ practice...
Several factors suggest that the male sex deficit will not disappear, and might even grow in the 21st century. First, surveys find a widening sex differential in desire in Finland (Kontula, 2009: 223, 225), and a decline in the frequency of sexual intercourse (inside and outside marriage) in Britain, the USA, Germany and Finland (Kontula, 2009: 236; Mercer et al., 2013) as well as Japan, which is known to have the lowest frequency of sexual intercourse in the developed world. Second, women’s increasing economic independence allows them to withdraw from sexual markets and relationships that they perceive to offer unfair bargains, especially if they do not want children. Third, changes in national sex ratios towards a numerical surplus of men helps women to re-set the rules in their own favour in developed societies (South and Trent, 1988).
Changes in the sex ratio are an invisible macro-level factor affecting gender roles and couple relationships (Guttentag and Secord, 1983). The surplus of males in China and India is large and well known. However the absence of major wars that traditionally eliminated the 6% surplus of male births is slowly changing sex ratios in western countries as well. A fundamental change in the sex ratio was identified in the 1970s in Britain. Whereas the 1951 Census showed women to outnumber men from age 18 onwards, the 1971 Census showed that men outnumbered women up to age 40, and would outnumber women up to age 60 by 2011 (OPCS, 1978: 11). This report prompted discussion of the likely social consequences of the reversal of the sex ratio in the prime-age group, including: greater investment in careers and delayed marriage for women; the choice of (marital) partner passing over to women; the age gap between spouses narrowing as men cease to be able to attract much younger women; greater male investment in their own grooming and an attractive appearance; an increase in sexual activity outside marriage; and an increase in homosexuality among men. All these social consequences have materialized to some extent. An additional consequence must be a growing male sexual deficit...
The sex ratio is known to affect animal behaviour. Experimental studies also find effects on men’s competition for mates, short-term thinking and willingness to invest resources in courtship (Dyson, 2012; Griskevicius et al., 2012; Székely and Székely, 2012; Weir et al., 2011). South and Trent (1988) found that the sex ratio affects women’s social status in developed economies far more than in developing societies. The impact on social relationships and mating markets may be just as important. In China, policymakers took it for granted that the surplus of males would result in more aggression from sex-starved unmarried men. The male surplus in China also contributed to the commercialization of sexuality and marriage markets: rising demand for commercial sexual services, bride kidnapping, mail-order brides from adjacent countries, marriage by purchase and compensated dating (Greenhalgh, 2012; see also Barber, 2000, 2003).
The sexual deficit among men is of theoretical and practical interest. It could be the root cause of patriarchal ideology and institutions that prioritize male activities and interests (Baumeister and Vohs, 2012; Hakim, 2011). It magnifies the value of women’s erotic capital in private relationships, and potentially in the public sphere also (Hakim, 2011, 2012). It helps to explain why some behaviours are almost exclusively male, such as the purchase of commercial sexual services and erotic entertainments of all kinds. The surplus of male desire must affect daily interactions and relationships between men and women, to some extent, consciously or subconsciously, as some men admit. It helps to explain the everyday sexism of male sexual harassment of women even in the 21st century (Bates, 2014), rape, sexual coercion and violence against women, including during war (Jukes, 1993; Macdowall et al., 2013; Scully and Marolla, 1990). Sexual violence is about sex rather than power games. The sexual deficit helps explain why masturbation is increasingly important for men (Kontula, 2009: 236).
We can expect men to deny, hide or trivialize the sexual deficit. It is not in men’s interest to let women know that they have any advantage that shifts the balance of power in private relationships in favour of women. As economists point out, the principle of least interest gives women an advantage in sexual markets. American academics argue that it would be unethical for women to exploit men’s ‘weakness’ (Baumeister et al., 2001: 264). French scholars recognize the power it gives women (Bajos et al., 1998: 222–232). South and Trent (1988) point out that men use their structural power to prevent women exploiting any advantage from high sex ratios (masculinized populations with a shortage of women). Similarly, men use their power to prevent women exploiting the male sexual deficit – or even becoming aware of it. Feminist claims that men and women have ‘equal’ sex drives play into the hands of patriarchal men.
Commercial sexual services have existed in all societies with a coinage, whether they are treated as legitimate or not. An International Labour Office (ILO) study of the sex industry, the largest such study ever undertaken, found that demand for erotic services grows as a country (or individual) becomes more affluent, so that overall demand is rising inexorably (Lim, 1998: 10, 73, 88–90, 106, 135, 210). The male sexual deficit explains why, in all societies, customers for the sex industry are men almost exclusively, and why demand is rising steadily. For example it doubled from 2% to 4% of men in Britain between 1990 and 2000 (Ward et al., 2005), and rose from 10% to 14% in Finland from 1992 to 1999 (Haavio-Mannila and Kontula, 2003: 127). Demand for such services from women is minuscule in all cultures, and this is not due to women’s lack of economic resources. Even poor men find the money if necessary; even affluent women are rarely tempted (Hakim, 2011: 42–43; Kontula and Haavio-Mannila, 1995: 126; Lim, 1998: 210). The sex industry has always been highly stratified, with a diversity of services at all price levels, because male demand exists at all income levels. Men’s ambivalence towards women working in the sexual entertainments industry may be because they exploit men’s ‘weakness’ so effectively – women can earn 10–40 times more than in conventional jobs (Egan, 2006; Frank, 2002; Hakim, 2011: 158; Lim, 1998: 33–34, 45, 53–57, 88–90, 115, 155, 207). Male prostitutes do not feel stigmatized, like women; on the contrary, they regard their work as demonstrating their masculinity and power.
In sum, surplus male sexuality provides a parsimonious macro-level explanation for several puzzles concerning relationships between men and women, sexual politics, sexual violence and the universal character of commercial sexual services. Yet sociologists pay little attention to sexuality. Only evolutionary psychology offers a central focus on sexuality, sexual violence, sex ratios and sex differences in sexuality, as illustrated by sexual strategies theory and parental investment theory (Buss and Schmitt, 1993; Schmitt, 2005). However, even in this discipline the male sexual deficit escaped attention. Evolutionary psychology has been more concerned with speculative theorizing about the prehistoric origins of human sexuality – a period not open to modern social science research...
The male sexual deficit in developed societies is an incontrovertible universal social fact, possibly of growing importance, yet is regarded as an outdated myth in radical feminist ideology and much public opinion... the findings of recent sex surveys remain unknown to many sociologists, to scholars in other disciplines, and even to sexuality specialists.
The sex deficit among (heterosexual) men helps to explain many puzzles, including why men are the principal customers for commercial sexual entertainments of all kinds, are most likely to have affairs, sometimes rape unwilling partners, offer other sexual violence against women, engage in sexual harassment in workplaces and public places, and respond poorly to having female colleagues in teamwork occupations such as the police or armed forces"
Among other things this ("It helps to explain the everyday sexism...") is evidence against rape as power (not sex).
This is also (yet more) evidence that men are hornier than women.
"This article reviews findings from some 30 sex surveys around the world showing that large and substantively important differences between men and women in the centrality of sexuality, sexual desire, sexual behaviour and attitudes persist in the 21st century, long after the contraceptive and sexual revolutions of the 1960s. Women’s lesser sexual motivation and interest means that many heterosexual men experience a shortfall in desired sexual activity. A reversal of the sex ratio to a male surplus among prime-age adults and other trends suggest that the sexual deficit among men may increase. The male sexual deficit (or surplus male sexuality) helps to explain sexual harassment, sexual violence, rape, rising demand for commercial sexual services and other behaviours that are almost exclusively male...
This article describes the sexual deficit among men (or surplus male sexuality), a phenomenon that appears to be universal in modern societies (Hakim, 2010, 2011: 38–73, 263–266). It emerged unexpectedly during research on sexual cultures, internet dating and marriage markets (Hakim, 2012). Yet feminists insist that men’s greater demand for sexual activity is an outdated myth. Recent sex surveys prove the myth to be a fact, one that the social sciences have yet to address, theoretically and empirically...
The feminist emphasis has been on ideological, moral and philosophical debates and theory (Jeffreys, 1997, 2005; Shrage, 1994; Soble, 2002; Walby, 1990: 109–127; Wittig, 1992), with a focus on male sexual harassment, violence and rape (Macdowall et al., 2013). Despite this, the idea of sex differences in sexuality is regularly challenged (Schmitt et al., 2012)...
The surveys show that the vast majority of men and women self-identify and act as heterosexuals: 97% in Britain, the USA, Australia, Scandinavia and Western Europe generally, whereas academic sexuality journals often focus on tiny sexual minorities...
Despite interest in all things sexual, no published sex survey report was found for Japan, although other surveys include questions on sexual topics...
People with liberal attitudes, an interest in sexuality and the sexually active are more likely to respond to sex surveys, so celibacy is usually understated in results (Dunne et al., 1997)...
The sex differentials in sexuality remain large, substantively important, and are found in all cultures, including the sexually liberated societies of Scandinavia. They cannot be dismissed as an outdated patriarchal myth as argued by feminists (Buss and Schmitt, 2011), especially as these national surveys were carried out long after the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Continuing sex differentials in sexuality in the 21st century include the following:
At all ages, the majority of women regard love as a precondition for sex, while a majority of men reject the idea (Sweden 1996).
•• Two-thirds of men accept, and two-thirds of women reject the idea of sexuality without love (France 1992). At all ages, men engage in sexual intercourse without any feelings of love two to four times more often than do women (Sweden 1996).
•• Men express two to ten times more enthusiasm than women for trying every variation in sexual activity.
•• The average number of sexual partners over a lifetime has fallen from two to three times higher among men to around 50%–100% higher today, so remains substantial.
•• When asked about their ideal sexual lifestyle, men are three times more likely to prefer several concurrent lovers: 20% vs 6% for women (Sweden 1996), 27% vs 7% for women (Estonia 2000).
•• Regular masturbation is two to three times more common among men, even among married men, and even in Sweden. A two-thirds majority of men masturbated in the last month, week or year compared to a one-third minority of women (Australia 2002, Finland 2007, Britain 2010).
•• Men are three times more likely to have frequent sexual fantasies, and to use erotica of all kinds. In Finland, a four-fifths majority of men find porn very arousing compared to half of women.
•• Two-fifths of men compared to one-fifth of women have an additional non-marital sex partner (Sweden 1996). Men report extra-marital affairs twice as often as women, even when they condemn affairs as morally wrong (Hakim, 2012). This pattern is observed both in villages and cities in China, where between one-quarter to half of divorces are now due to adultery. Only in France, Spain and Italy do men and women begin to converge in their acceptance (and practice) of affairs.
•• Casual sex was regarded as acceptable by a two-thirds majority of men vs a onethird minority of women in Britain in 1990. In 2010, twice as many men as women regarded one-night stands as ‘not wrong at all’: 18% vs 9%, or 20% vs 13% for people aged 16–44.
•• Around the world, customers for commercial sexual services and erotic entertainments are almost invariably male. Male prostitutes have more male than female clients. In Australia, 16% of men have paid for sex compared to 0.1% of women, with similar figures for Northern Europe. Across Northern Europe, men are equally or more likely to have sold sexual services. In Greece and Italy, around 40% of men have bought sexual services compared to less than 1% of women.
•• Men are four times more likely than women to always gladly agree to sexual approaches from their partner: 38% of men vs 11% of women (Finland 2007).
•• When asked about the ideal frequency of sexual activity, one-quarter of men but only 8% of women say they prefer sex at least once a day or more (Australia 2002). In Finland, men’s ideal frequency is around twice a week vs once a week for women.
•• Twice as many men as women experience frequent sexual desire: half vs one-fifth of women in Sweden.
•• One-third of women vs one in ten men have never had an erotic fantasy; one-third of men but only one in ten women have regular erotic fantasies (Italy 2000).
•• The most commonly reported sexual problem is lack of interest in having sex. In Australia, over half of all women report this compared to one-quarter of men. In all countries, the rate for women is at least double the rate for men, at all ages. In Finland, one-third of women but only 13% of men report lack of interest. Even in France, 8% of husbands compared to 41% of wives aged up to 45 years reported lack of desire as a problem in 1992.
A cross-cultural study of 29 countries shows that sex differences in desire and sexual interest are universal, but the gap between men and women is larger in male-dominated cultures than in liberal western societies...
The contraceptive revolution of the 1960s eliminated the fear of pregnancy among women – always a powerful demotivator (Cook, 2004; Szreter and Fisher, 2011). In the 1960s, over one-third of women with three or more children deeply regretted each new pregnancy (Cartwright, 1978). Yet sexual interest/desire seems to be surprisingly constant across generations. The 2010 British survey provides the most up-to-date information on sexual expression. It shows that in all age groups, females are more than twice as likely as men to lack interest in sex (Table 2). From their twenties onwards, one-third of women say they lack interest in sexual activity compared to one in seven men. They are also twice as likely to say they lack enjoyment in sex (12% vs 5% of men), but these are small minorities...
Despite a culture that welcomes female sexuality, French men and women are clear that male desire outweighs female sexual desire most of the time, and becomes the main driving force in longer-duration relationships, as women’s sexual desire wanes over time (Table 1). In Britain, among couples aged 25 and over, one-quarter of men and one-third of women report an imbalance in sexual interest with their partner in 2010. The imbalance is smallest in the 16–24 age group: 15% of young men and 20% of young women report the problem, and it grows thereafter (Mitchell et al., 2013: Table 3). Even in the 21st century, one-third of women report no sexual interest and/or an imbalance of sexual interest in a current relationship. From three different cultures, using different indicators, the patterns in Tables 1 and 2 and Figure 1 tell the same story...
The gap in sexual desire between men and women is growing over time...
Compared to countries in Africa south of the Sahara, sexual activity in Europe and North America remains a relatively rare entertainment, despite the ‘sexual revolution’. The frequency of intercourse within married couples is four to 18 times higher, on average, in certain African societies (Hakim, 2011: 64) and is also higher among ‘sexual superactives’, to use the label in the 1996 Swedish report (Lewin, 2000). Within Europe, sexual activity remains greater in Southern Europe than in sexually liberated Scandinavia (Hubert et al., 1998; Kontula, 2009: 127–129). In China, regular sexual activity is regarded as healthy and a psycho-physical need, rather than as a marital duty, so most couples report having intercourse weekly or more often. But frequencies are lowest in the big cities, especially Shanghai, where one in seven couples is celibate (Liu et al., 1997)...
The permanent sex difference in sexual interest and sexual exploration is shown also by sex differences that are substantially larger among homosexuals than among heterosexuals. Sex surveys show gay men (but not lesbians) to be much more active than heterosexual men, because the constraint of lesser female interest is removed. One indicator is the number of sexual partners in the last year, last five years, or ever. Among heterosexual men, numbers over a lifetime are typically in the range 10–11 compared to 17–35 for gay men. Maximum figures of 1000+ and 5000+ are reported for gay men vs 8–90 for lesbians (Leridon et al., 1998: Table 5.5; Messiah, 1998). American gay men report 200–300% more partners than lesbian women, and men are more likely than women to espouse the recreational-libertarian sexual ideology – 20% vs 14% (Laumann et al., 1994: 314–334)...
The second analysis incorporates data for another 86 countries, covering Africa, the Middle East, East Asia and Latin America as well as Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Between them, the two analyses cover publications over the 40 years from 1966 to 2007 – the period following the contraceptive revolution of the 1960s... Large and important differences between men and women persist in attitudes to casual sex, casual sex practice, pornography use and masturbation practice. Sexual desire or sexual interest are not studied directly, but these other measures reflect continuing differences in sex drive and motivation... Although men and women have similar attitudes accepting masturbation as normal rather than deviant, there are large differences in actual practice (average d = 0.96 in 1993, 0.53 and 0.58 in 2010) among white people, and smaller differences among black Americans. Solo sex is of special importance as an indicator of sexual desire, because there are no financial costs and no partner is required, so it is an ‘equal opportunity’ practice...
Several factors suggest that the male sex deficit will not disappear, and might even grow in the 21st century. First, surveys find a widening sex differential in desire in Finland (Kontula, 2009: 223, 225), and a decline in the frequency of sexual intercourse (inside and outside marriage) in Britain, the USA, Germany and Finland (Kontula, 2009: 236; Mercer et al., 2013) as well as Japan, which is known to have the lowest frequency of sexual intercourse in the developed world. Second, women’s increasing economic independence allows them to withdraw from sexual markets and relationships that they perceive to offer unfair bargains, especially if they do not want children. Third, changes in national sex ratios towards a numerical surplus of men helps women to re-set the rules in their own favour in developed societies (South and Trent, 1988).
Changes in the sex ratio are an invisible macro-level factor affecting gender roles and couple relationships (Guttentag and Secord, 1983). The surplus of males in China and India is large and well known. However the absence of major wars that traditionally eliminated the 6% surplus of male births is slowly changing sex ratios in western countries as well. A fundamental change in the sex ratio was identified in the 1970s in Britain. Whereas the 1951 Census showed women to outnumber men from age 18 onwards, the 1971 Census showed that men outnumbered women up to age 40, and would outnumber women up to age 60 by 2011 (OPCS, 1978: 11). This report prompted discussion of the likely social consequences of the reversal of the sex ratio in the prime-age group, including: greater investment in careers and delayed marriage for women; the choice of (marital) partner passing over to women; the age gap between spouses narrowing as men cease to be able to attract much younger women; greater male investment in their own grooming and an attractive appearance; an increase in sexual activity outside marriage; and an increase in homosexuality among men. All these social consequences have materialized to some extent. An additional consequence must be a growing male sexual deficit...
The sex ratio is known to affect animal behaviour. Experimental studies also find effects on men’s competition for mates, short-term thinking and willingness to invest resources in courtship (Dyson, 2012; Griskevicius et al., 2012; Székely and Székely, 2012; Weir et al., 2011). South and Trent (1988) found that the sex ratio affects women’s social status in developed economies far more than in developing societies. The impact on social relationships and mating markets may be just as important. In China, policymakers took it for granted that the surplus of males would result in more aggression from sex-starved unmarried men. The male surplus in China also contributed to the commercialization of sexuality and marriage markets: rising demand for commercial sexual services, bride kidnapping, mail-order brides from adjacent countries, marriage by purchase and compensated dating (Greenhalgh, 2012; see also Barber, 2000, 2003).
The sexual deficit among men is of theoretical and practical interest. It could be the root cause of patriarchal ideology and institutions that prioritize male activities and interests (Baumeister and Vohs, 2012; Hakim, 2011). It magnifies the value of women’s erotic capital in private relationships, and potentially in the public sphere also (Hakim, 2011, 2012). It helps to explain why some behaviours are almost exclusively male, such as the purchase of commercial sexual services and erotic entertainments of all kinds. The surplus of male desire must affect daily interactions and relationships between men and women, to some extent, consciously or subconsciously, as some men admit. It helps to explain the everyday sexism of male sexual harassment of women even in the 21st century (Bates, 2014), rape, sexual coercion and violence against women, including during war (Jukes, 1993; Macdowall et al., 2013; Scully and Marolla, 1990). Sexual violence is about sex rather than power games. The sexual deficit helps explain why masturbation is increasingly important for men (Kontula, 2009: 236).
We can expect men to deny, hide or trivialize the sexual deficit. It is not in men’s interest to let women know that they have any advantage that shifts the balance of power in private relationships in favour of women. As economists point out, the principle of least interest gives women an advantage in sexual markets. American academics argue that it would be unethical for women to exploit men’s ‘weakness’ (Baumeister et al., 2001: 264). French scholars recognize the power it gives women (Bajos et al., 1998: 222–232). South and Trent (1988) point out that men use their structural power to prevent women exploiting any advantage from high sex ratios (masculinized populations with a shortage of women). Similarly, men use their power to prevent women exploiting the male sexual deficit – or even becoming aware of it. Feminist claims that men and women have ‘equal’ sex drives play into the hands of patriarchal men.
Commercial sexual services have existed in all societies with a coinage, whether they are treated as legitimate or not. An International Labour Office (ILO) study of the sex industry, the largest such study ever undertaken, found that demand for erotic services grows as a country (or individual) becomes more affluent, so that overall demand is rising inexorably (Lim, 1998: 10, 73, 88–90, 106, 135, 210). The male sexual deficit explains why, in all societies, customers for the sex industry are men almost exclusively, and why demand is rising steadily. For example it doubled from 2% to 4% of men in Britain between 1990 and 2000 (Ward et al., 2005), and rose from 10% to 14% in Finland from 1992 to 1999 (Haavio-Mannila and Kontula, 2003: 127). Demand for such services from women is minuscule in all cultures, and this is not due to women’s lack of economic resources. Even poor men find the money if necessary; even affluent women are rarely tempted (Hakim, 2011: 42–43; Kontula and Haavio-Mannila, 1995: 126; Lim, 1998: 210). The sex industry has always been highly stratified, with a diversity of services at all price levels, because male demand exists at all income levels. Men’s ambivalence towards women working in the sexual entertainments industry may be because they exploit men’s ‘weakness’ so effectively – women can earn 10–40 times more than in conventional jobs (Egan, 2006; Frank, 2002; Hakim, 2011: 158; Lim, 1998: 33–34, 45, 53–57, 88–90, 115, 155, 207). Male prostitutes do not feel stigmatized, like women; on the contrary, they regard their work as demonstrating their masculinity and power.
In sum, surplus male sexuality provides a parsimonious macro-level explanation for several puzzles concerning relationships between men and women, sexual politics, sexual violence and the universal character of commercial sexual services. Yet sociologists pay little attention to sexuality. Only evolutionary psychology offers a central focus on sexuality, sexual violence, sex ratios and sex differences in sexuality, as illustrated by sexual strategies theory and parental investment theory (Buss and Schmitt, 1993; Schmitt, 2005). However, even in this discipline the male sexual deficit escaped attention. Evolutionary psychology has been more concerned with speculative theorizing about the prehistoric origins of human sexuality – a period not open to modern social science research...
The male sexual deficit in developed societies is an incontrovertible universal social fact, possibly of growing importance, yet is regarded as an outdated myth in radical feminist ideology and much public opinion... the findings of recent sex surveys remain unknown to many sociologists, to scholars in other disciplines, and even to sexuality specialists.
The sex deficit among (heterosexual) men helps to explain many puzzles, including why men are the principal customers for commercial sexual entertainments of all kinds, are most likely to have affairs, sometimes rape unwilling partners, offer other sexual violence against women, engage in sexual harassment in workplaces and public places, and respond poorly to having female colleagues in teamwork occupations such as the police or armed forces"
Among other things this ("It helps to explain the everyday sexism...") is evidence against rape as power (not sex).
This is also (yet more) evidence that men are hornier than women.
Post ID: 3845816933629451547
Links - 26th July 2017 (1)
Can Listening to the Beatles Reverse Aging? - "They show that some fairly widespread scientific practices-such as determining sample size on the fly, and assessing the effect of the independent variable being manipulated in an experiment on multiple dependent variables being measured simultaneously-can actually lead to false positive rates as high as 61%! That is to say, if one follows some of the practices they describe, one risks "discovering" something false 61% of the time. They illustrate the possibility with a study that shows a significant decrease in the chronological age of participants after listening to The Beatles' "When I'm Sixty-Four""
The Beatles paper is False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant by Joseph P. Simmons, Leif D. Nelson, Uri Simonsohn
The Beatles classic 'When I'm Sixty Four' among songs that 'can encourage health problems among the elderly'
Everything is offensive. Everything is harmful. So everything should be censored.
Threats force cancellation of trans cartoonist's Halifax book launch - "Death threats and hate-filled messages forced the cancellation of a Halifax book launch for Montreal-based transgender cartoonist Sophie Labelle. The event, meant to promote Labelle's book Dating Tips for Trans and Queer Weirdos, was to be held May 17 at Venus Envy, a Barrington Street sex shop and bookstore... Labelle announced on Facebook that she had received thousands of death threats over the past few days for making her art and that her home address had been posted on several online forums. Her webpage and Facebook also got hacked... Neither Haywood nor Labelle reported the threats to police. "We did discuss notifying the police. It's a bit of a touchy issue because the main audience for Sophie's comics are trans people, trans women specifically and, you know, the police ... don't always handle themselves well with transgender folks and many people in the transgender community have had negative interactions with the police," Haywood said. Having a police presence outside of the store for the launch would not have been a good solution"
You can't be very worried and not want to take any chances if you don't report them to the police
Adelaide couple faked death threats to get holidays and compensation - "Peisley and Lean were arrested after police covertly broke into their flat and marked a stack of envelopes and paper with “invisible ink”. The next threat the couple handed over to police was tested with a UV light to reveal the markings the officers had made."
New Hot Take: The RompHim Is Dismantling the Gender Binary, and If You Mock It, You're a Bigot - "The same social-justice warriors defending the RompHim have also, of course, meticulously documented the ways the new garment might be problematic. Stryker doesn’t like that the RompHim doesn’t come in plus sizes, given that “many of the folks I know who were excited about this are on the XL-and-larger end of the spectrum.” Also concerning: That this garment may be allowing affluent people to appropriate the jumpsuit, which has traditionally been a working-class staple... The PC left also doesn’t like that it’s a “RompHim,” because that’s inherently a gendered term"
The best sex advice I never got - "What listicles and snarky sex advice stories rarely address is the cryptic convergences that go into great sex. Take Murray’s mind-blowing suggestion that there are countless reasons to have sex beyond just the desire to get off (she cites a study that found 237 unique reasons people report for getting down and dirty). All good for a Psychology Today blog post, but that headline — “6 Reasons Why Getting Off Isn’t All That” — probably won’t make the top 10-millionth hit on a Google search (although it may be found in the vicinity of “Top 10 Ways to Stop Being Too Tired for Sex”). But, sadly, none of that is as deeply buried in the cloud as my favorite sex advice listicle: “5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Take Sex Advice from the Internet.” That one pretty much nails it."
J. R. R. Tolkien (author): Is the 'pipeweed' so adored by Gandalf and hobbits essentially marijuana? - Quora - "Pipe-weed is tobacco, a variety of genus nicotiana, which was brought from the island of Elenna to Middle-Earth by the Númenoreans. It was originally cultivated as a decorative plant and for the fragrance of its flowers, and it began to grow wild in places where they lived"
Harvard Study Reveals Huge Extent of Anti-Trump Media Bias - "Trump has repeatedly claimed that his treatment by the media is unprecedented in its hostility. This study suggests that, at least when it comes to recent history, he’s right."
Hillary Clinton Campaign Donations From Journalists - "Between Jan. 1 2015 and Aug. 30 2016, those who identified themselves in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors -- and others known to be working in journalism -- donated more than $396,000 combined to the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump, according to the report. The vast majority of those funds -- about $382,000, or 96% -- went to the Democratic nominee. Only about $14,000 went to the Republican."
The Manchester Attack and the Myth of the ‘Lone Wolf’ - "experts working in this field know that while some terrorists may carry out their attacks alone in the last moment, planning within a cell is often likely for bomb attacks, and jihadist groups often play an inspiring, enabling, or coordinating role. The “lone wolf” phenomenon is a myth. Recent research highlights this quite well. In 2013, researchers at Pennsylvania State University studied the behavior of 119 so-called lone-wolf terrorists. This study found that even though these terrorists went “operational” alone, in 79 percent of cases others were at least aware of the perpetrators extremist ideology, and in 64 percent of cases family and friends were aware of the individual’s terrorist intent... blaming terror attacks on isolated loners who get radicalized because they can’t fit into regular society flagrantly sidesteps the role that community sympathy and insulation for extremist ideologies plays. It turns a blind eye to the fact that we are living through a full blown jihadist insurgency being fought in our own streets... Such attacks may well be the “new normal,” but we must not accept this status quo. If normal means regular attacks by jihadist terrorists against our children and youth at the dawn of their lives, then this “normal” must not be allowed to continue"
Female terrorists play a far bigger role in Isis than previously thought, research reveals - "Despite the figures most commonly associated with the terror organisation being male, thousands of women are the ‘glue holding the organisation together’"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Poor Old Potato - "They don't keep very well forever they put out little sprouts and then eventually they go rotten and they develop a horrible smell so the Incas figured out how to solve this problem. They invented effectively instant mashed potatoes. So they would put these potatoes up in the high Andes where it would get very cold and the potatoes would freeze solid and then in the sun when the sun came out they would thaw and those potatoes would get sort of squidgy and then you could stomp on them a bit like you are pressing grapes and you could stomp out the moisture. You then end up with a sort of rock hard object which is a dried up, freeze dried potato which is the indestructible... you could then smash up and make into a powder and reconstitute into a sort of porridgey mashed potato... The Incas were really good at using different ecological niches in the Andes to grow different crops. So they would grow potatoes at higher altitudes where they flourished. They would grow things like chili peppers or other foods at slightly lower altitudes. So they were very good at terracing these steep mountain slopes so they could get maximum agricultural terrain"
That Friend Who's Back From College With A New Accent Is Faking, Science Says - "After the age of 12, our brains have been pre-set to hear and produce sounds in a specific and, unfortunately, not very flexible way. So, this video claims, even if you went to Spain at 12 years old and even if you stayed there for 40 years, you will almost never be able speak Spanish with a perfect accent."
A Terrible Mistake - Why The USSR Ignored Britain's Warnings of Impending Invasion - "Stalin took a hands-on approach to military intelligence. He liked to see the raw material gathered by his agents. While this might seem like a good idea, it was not. Stalin filtered this intelligence for evidence that matched his preconceptions. He ignored the insights of professionals better qualified to understand military intelligence.
Student Mob Calls for Firing, Shrieks at Professor for Objecting to No-Whites 'Day of Absence' - "Bret Weinstein, a biology professor at the university, sent out an email criticizing the purpose of this year’s “Day Of Absence” event where, unlike in the past, white students and faculty members were asked to leave campus to give space to people of color"
Again, this is a state - not an elite private - college
Evergreen Professor Berated By Student Mob For Opposing Racist Event Told He's Not Safe on Campus - "“I have been told by the Chief of Police it’s not safe for me to be on campus,” Weinstein told King5.com, prompting him to hold his Thursday class in a park."
Maybe some liberals will defend this as SJWs' "free speech"
Marijuana Treatment Reduces Severe Epileptic Seizures
Trump Fires Comey: Why the President Made the Right Call - "Rosenstein’s memo impressively cites the opinions of former attorneys general and other legal authorities to support his claim that Comey erred both in making the decision not to proceed and then using a press conference to criticize Clinton for being irresponsible while announcing he would not indict her."
Phew! You may spend less than you think during retirement - "Overall spending (in today’s dollars) falls about 30% from age 45 to age 75. T. Rowe Price found that nearly three years into retirement, retirees are living on an average 66% of their pre-retirement income. Surprisingly, spending less doesn’t seem to be raining on their collective parades. More than half of retirees tell T. Rowe that they’re living as well or better than they did when they were working – and nearly two-thirds like not spending as much. They find not having to keep up with the Joneses freeing."
Golden spending in the silver years - "Older Singaporeans spend relatively more time shopping than younger Singaporeans. They spend more on food at the fresh market and on store brand products. Their expenditure on high-end supermarket and on store brand products was less than younger Singaporeans, suggesting that there is a substitution - as we retire and have more time, but less disposable income, we substitute higher price items with cheaper alternatives that require more time spent in purchasing."
Canoe conman’s new life, running a stall in the slums - "Unusually in a marriage between a Filipina and a Western man, Mercy appears to be the main breadwinner... Details of Darwin’s modest lifestyle emerged in the week that the Daily Mail published extracts from a book by his former wife Anne, telling the full story of how she helped him fake his death in a canoe to cash in his life insurance."
This is the John Darwin case
Why Doctors Order Too Many Tests - "Too many tests can be hazardous to your health for several reasons:
Following up on false positive results can be a wild goose chase, with more unnecessary tests and procedures. There’s no way to tell for sure whether a suspicious shadow on an x-ray represents a deadly disease or a harmless artifact without invasive procedures that carry risks.
Imaging procedures and other tests frequently identify “incidentalomas,” abnormal findings that are mere curiosities and that have no impact on the patient’s health other than to sometimes cause unnecessary worry.
Some tests involve potentially harmful radiation; and even the simple act of drawing blood can cause pain, bruising, and a tiny risk of infection. Even minor risks are not justified if the likelihood of benefit is too low."
Health Care Myth Busters: Is There a High Degree of Scientific Certainty in Modern Medicine? - "Reams of research point to the same finding: physicians looking at the same thing will disagree with each other, or even with themselves, from 10 percent to 50 percent of the time during virtually every aspect of the medical-care process—from taking a medical history to doing a physical examination, reading a laboratory test, performing a pathological diagnosis and recommending a treatment. Physician judgment is highly variable... Why are so many physicians making inaccurate decisions in their medical practices? It is not because physicians lack competence, sincerity or diligence, but because they must make decisions about tremendously complex problems with very little solid evidence available to back them up... Most physicians practice in a virtually data-free environment, devoid of feedback on the correctness of their practice. They know very little about the quality and outcomes of their diagnosis and treatment decisions. And without data indicating that they should change what they're doing, physicians continue doing what they've been doing all along. Physicians rely heavily on the "art" of medicine, practicing not according to solid research evidence, but rather by how they were trained, by the culture of their own practice environment and by their own experiences with their patients... a disturbingly large chunk of medical practice is still "craft" rather than science"
Surgical Gloves ‘discourage Doctors From Washing Hands’ - "Doctors who wear surgical gloves are around 30 per cent less likely to wash their hands... the belief that gloves provide a sterile barrier between doctor and patient is no more than a delusion"
Good example of risk compensation (e.g. seatbelts lead to drivers going faster)
When Evidence Says No, but Doctors Say Yes - "What the patients in both stories had in common was that neither needed a stent. By dint of an inquiring mind and a smartphone, one escaped with his life intact... Some examples defy intuition: CPR is no more effective with rescue breathing than if chest compressions are used alone; and breast-cancer survivors who are told not to lift weights with swollen limbs actually should lift weights, because it improves their symptoms... medicine is quick to adopt practices based on shaky evidence but slow to drop them once they’ve been blown up by solid proof... many patients they see want, or even demand, to be operated upon and will simply shop around until they find a willing doctor... Medical innovation has certainly helped; it’s just that public health has more often been the society-wide game changer. Most people just don’t believe it."
Getting a degree from Google can save your life
'Abolition of Whiteness' course offered at Hunter College
Research finds that as a group, only men pay taxes - "In nearly all age groups, women receive more tax (by way of subsidy or benefits) than they give. With the exception of the age group between 45-59 (a 15 year span) years old, women cost more to the state than the tax they provide. In contrast, men generate more tax revenue than they cost between 23 and 65 (a 43 year span). In the brief period in which women generate more or as much tax money than they consume, men out-score them by at least 3 times. By in large, the cumulative tax money given to women outweighs the tax money generated by women... The fact that feminists want a stronger government is not a coincidence. While historically, women had to choose a wealthy husband for resources, they can now stay single, be lesbians, marry a poor man, or use the sperm bank, and the state will still transfer male taxes to them. Interestingly, within 10 years of women’s suffrage, the government doubled their tax revenue and expenditure in the USA. The government has somehow become the new providing husband, by taking money from anonymous men who have no say about their money. While women are still strongly financially dependent on men, men are simply unable to use the money they make for their own interests. These findings show just how simplistic the notion of privilege is. While men make more on average, it allows women to have access to education, health, and services. The patriarchy is pretty generous after all."
The New Zealand paper this is based on is The Distribution of Income and Fiscal Incidence by Age and Gender: Some Evidence from New Zealand by Omar Aziz, Norman Gemmell and Athene Laws
Death of fair-skinned child among Jarawa tribe leaves Indian police puzzled - "Because the baby was fair skinned, it was assumed he had been fathered by an outsider, and killed according to a ritual custom of the tribe. In the past Indian authorities, who seek to interfere as little as possible with the aboriginal culture, have turned a blind eye to such incidents. Indeed, in the 200 years since British settlers arrived to set up a penal colony on the island, no Jarawa tribesman has even been named as a suspect in a crime... Samir Acharya, a local activist, told the New York Times that the Jarawa “have the right to maintain the purity of their race.” “If they decide such a child should be wasted, let them do it,” he said."
Cultural imperialism!
The Beatles paper is False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant by Joseph P. Simmons, Leif D. Nelson, Uri Simonsohn
The Beatles classic 'When I'm Sixty Four' among songs that 'can encourage health problems among the elderly'
Everything is offensive. Everything is harmful. So everything should be censored.
Threats force cancellation of trans cartoonist's Halifax book launch - "Death threats and hate-filled messages forced the cancellation of a Halifax book launch for Montreal-based transgender cartoonist Sophie Labelle. The event, meant to promote Labelle's book Dating Tips for Trans and Queer Weirdos, was to be held May 17 at Venus Envy, a Barrington Street sex shop and bookstore... Labelle announced on Facebook that she had received thousands of death threats over the past few days for making her art and that her home address had been posted on several online forums. Her webpage and Facebook also got hacked... Neither Haywood nor Labelle reported the threats to police. "We did discuss notifying the police. It's a bit of a touchy issue because the main audience for Sophie's comics are trans people, trans women specifically and, you know, the police ... don't always handle themselves well with transgender folks and many people in the transgender community have had negative interactions with the police," Haywood said. Having a police presence outside of the store for the launch would not have been a good solution"
You can't be very worried and not want to take any chances if you don't report them to the police
Adelaide couple faked death threats to get holidays and compensation - "Peisley and Lean were arrested after police covertly broke into their flat and marked a stack of envelopes and paper with “invisible ink”. The next threat the couple handed over to police was tested with a UV light to reveal the markings the officers had made."
New Hot Take: The RompHim Is Dismantling the Gender Binary, and If You Mock It, You're a Bigot - "The same social-justice warriors defending the RompHim have also, of course, meticulously documented the ways the new garment might be problematic. Stryker doesn’t like that the RompHim doesn’t come in plus sizes, given that “many of the folks I know who were excited about this are on the XL-and-larger end of the spectrum.” Also concerning: That this garment may be allowing affluent people to appropriate the jumpsuit, which has traditionally been a working-class staple... The PC left also doesn’t like that it’s a “RompHim,” because that’s inherently a gendered term"
The best sex advice I never got - "What listicles and snarky sex advice stories rarely address is the cryptic convergences that go into great sex. Take Murray’s mind-blowing suggestion that there are countless reasons to have sex beyond just the desire to get off (she cites a study that found 237 unique reasons people report for getting down and dirty). All good for a Psychology Today blog post, but that headline — “6 Reasons Why Getting Off Isn’t All That” — probably won’t make the top 10-millionth hit on a Google search (although it may be found in the vicinity of “Top 10 Ways to Stop Being Too Tired for Sex”). But, sadly, none of that is as deeply buried in the cloud as my favorite sex advice listicle: “5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Take Sex Advice from the Internet.” That one pretty much nails it."
J. R. R. Tolkien (author): Is the 'pipeweed' so adored by Gandalf and hobbits essentially marijuana? - Quora - "Pipe-weed is tobacco, a variety of genus nicotiana, which was brought from the island of Elenna to Middle-Earth by the Númenoreans. It was originally cultivated as a decorative plant and for the fragrance of its flowers, and it began to grow wild in places where they lived"
Harvard Study Reveals Huge Extent of Anti-Trump Media Bias - "Trump has repeatedly claimed that his treatment by the media is unprecedented in its hostility. This study suggests that, at least when it comes to recent history, he’s right."
Hillary Clinton Campaign Donations From Journalists - "Between Jan. 1 2015 and Aug. 30 2016, those who identified themselves in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors -- and others known to be working in journalism -- donated more than $396,000 combined to the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump, according to the report. The vast majority of those funds -- about $382,000, or 96% -- went to the Democratic nominee. Only about $14,000 went to the Republican."
The Manchester Attack and the Myth of the ‘Lone Wolf’ - "experts working in this field know that while some terrorists may carry out their attacks alone in the last moment, planning within a cell is often likely for bomb attacks, and jihadist groups often play an inspiring, enabling, or coordinating role. The “lone wolf” phenomenon is a myth. Recent research highlights this quite well. In 2013, researchers at Pennsylvania State University studied the behavior of 119 so-called lone-wolf terrorists. This study found that even though these terrorists went “operational” alone, in 79 percent of cases others were at least aware of the perpetrators extremist ideology, and in 64 percent of cases family and friends were aware of the individual’s terrorist intent... blaming terror attacks on isolated loners who get radicalized because they can’t fit into regular society flagrantly sidesteps the role that community sympathy and insulation for extremist ideologies plays. It turns a blind eye to the fact that we are living through a full blown jihadist insurgency being fought in our own streets... Such attacks may well be the “new normal,” but we must not accept this status quo. If normal means regular attacks by jihadist terrorists against our children and youth at the dawn of their lives, then this “normal” must not be allowed to continue"
Female terrorists play a far bigger role in Isis than previously thought, research reveals - "Despite the figures most commonly associated with the terror organisation being male, thousands of women are the ‘glue holding the organisation together’"
BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Poor Old Potato - "They don't keep very well forever they put out little sprouts and then eventually they go rotten and they develop a horrible smell so the Incas figured out how to solve this problem. They invented effectively instant mashed potatoes. So they would put these potatoes up in the high Andes where it would get very cold and the potatoes would freeze solid and then in the sun when the sun came out they would thaw and those potatoes would get sort of squidgy and then you could stomp on them a bit like you are pressing grapes and you could stomp out the moisture. You then end up with a sort of rock hard object which is a dried up, freeze dried potato which is the indestructible... you could then smash up and make into a powder and reconstitute into a sort of porridgey mashed potato... The Incas were really good at using different ecological niches in the Andes to grow different crops. So they would grow potatoes at higher altitudes where they flourished. They would grow things like chili peppers or other foods at slightly lower altitudes. So they were very good at terracing these steep mountain slopes so they could get maximum agricultural terrain"
That Friend Who's Back From College With A New Accent Is Faking, Science Says - "After the age of 12, our brains have been pre-set to hear and produce sounds in a specific and, unfortunately, not very flexible way. So, this video claims, even if you went to Spain at 12 years old and even if you stayed there for 40 years, you will almost never be able speak Spanish with a perfect accent."
A Terrible Mistake - Why The USSR Ignored Britain's Warnings of Impending Invasion - "Stalin took a hands-on approach to military intelligence. He liked to see the raw material gathered by his agents. While this might seem like a good idea, it was not. Stalin filtered this intelligence for evidence that matched his preconceptions. He ignored the insights of professionals better qualified to understand military intelligence.
Student Mob Calls for Firing, Shrieks at Professor for Objecting to No-Whites 'Day of Absence' - "Bret Weinstein, a biology professor at the university, sent out an email criticizing the purpose of this year’s “Day Of Absence” event where, unlike in the past, white students and faculty members were asked to leave campus to give space to people of color"
Again, this is a state - not an elite private - college
Evergreen Professor Berated By Student Mob For Opposing Racist Event Told He's Not Safe on Campus - "“I have been told by the Chief of Police it’s not safe for me to be on campus,” Weinstein told King5.com, prompting him to hold his Thursday class in a park."
Maybe some liberals will defend this as SJWs' "free speech"
Marijuana Treatment Reduces Severe Epileptic Seizures
Trump Fires Comey: Why the President Made the Right Call - "Rosenstein’s memo impressively cites the opinions of former attorneys general and other legal authorities to support his claim that Comey erred both in making the decision not to proceed and then using a press conference to criticize Clinton for being irresponsible while announcing he would not indict her."
Phew! You may spend less than you think during retirement - "Overall spending (in today’s dollars) falls about 30% from age 45 to age 75. T. Rowe Price found that nearly three years into retirement, retirees are living on an average 66% of their pre-retirement income. Surprisingly, spending less doesn’t seem to be raining on their collective parades. More than half of retirees tell T. Rowe that they’re living as well or better than they did when they were working – and nearly two-thirds like not spending as much. They find not having to keep up with the Joneses freeing."
Golden spending in the silver years - "Older Singaporeans spend relatively more time shopping than younger Singaporeans. They spend more on food at the fresh market and on store brand products. Their expenditure on high-end supermarket and on store brand products was less than younger Singaporeans, suggesting that there is a substitution - as we retire and have more time, but less disposable income, we substitute higher price items with cheaper alternatives that require more time spent in purchasing."
Canoe conman’s new life, running a stall in the slums - "Unusually in a marriage between a Filipina and a Western man, Mercy appears to be the main breadwinner... Details of Darwin’s modest lifestyle emerged in the week that the Daily Mail published extracts from a book by his former wife Anne, telling the full story of how she helped him fake his death in a canoe to cash in his life insurance."
This is the John Darwin case
Why Doctors Order Too Many Tests - "Too many tests can be hazardous to your health for several reasons:
Following up on false positive results can be a wild goose chase, with more unnecessary tests and procedures. There’s no way to tell for sure whether a suspicious shadow on an x-ray represents a deadly disease or a harmless artifact without invasive procedures that carry risks.
Imaging procedures and other tests frequently identify “incidentalomas,” abnormal findings that are mere curiosities and that have no impact on the patient’s health other than to sometimes cause unnecessary worry.
Some tests involve potentially harmful radiation; and even the simple act of drawing blood can cause pain, bruising, and a tiny risk of infection. Even minor risks are not justified if the likelihood of benefit is too low."
Health Care Myth Busters: Is There a High Degree of Scientific Certainty in Modern Medicine? - "Reams of research point to the same finding: physicians looking at the same thing will disagree with each other, or even with themselves, from 10 percent to 50 percent of the time during virtually every aspect of the medical-care process—from taking a medical history to doing a physical examination, reading a laboratory test, performing a pathological diagnosis and recommending a treatment. Physician judgment is highly variable... Why are so many physicians making inaccurate decisions in their medical practices? It is not because physicians lack competence, sincerity or diligence, but because they must make decisions about tremendously complex problems with very little solid evidence available to back them up... Most physicians practice in a virtually data-free environment, devoid of feedback on the correctness of their practice. They know very little about the quality and outcomes of their diagnosis and treatment decisions. And without data indicating that they should change what they're doing, physicians continue doing what they've been doing all along. Physicians rely heavily on the "art" of medicine, practicing not according to solid research evidence, but rather by how they were trained, by the culture of their own practice environment and by their own experiences with their patients... a disturbingly large chunk of medical practice is still "craft" rather than science"
Surgical Gloves ‘discourage Doctors From Washing Hands’ - "Doctors who wear surgical gloves are around 30 per cent less likely to wash their hands... the belief that gloves provide a sterile barrier between doctor and patient is no more than a delusion"
Good example of risk compensation (e.g. seatbelts lead to drivers going faster)
When Evidence Says No, but Doctors Say Yes - "What the patients in both stories had in common was that neither needed a stent. By dint of an inquiring mind and a smartphone, one escaped with his life intact... Some examples defy intuition: CPR is no more effective with rescue breathing than if chest compressions are used alone; and breast-cancer survivors who are told not to lift weights with swollen limbs actually should lift weights, because it improves their symptoms... medicine is quick to adopt practices based on shaky evidence but slow to drop them once they’ve been blown up by solid proof... many patients they see want, or even demand, to be operated upon and will simply shop around until they find a willing doctor... Medical innovation has certainly helped; it’s just that public health has more often been the society-wide game changer. Most people just don’t believe it."
Getting a degree from Google can save your life
'Abolition of Whiteness' course offered at Hunter College
Research finds that as a group, only men pay taxes - "In nearly all age groups, women receive more tax (by way of subsidy or benefits) than they give. With the exception of the age group between 45-59 (a 15 year span) years old, women cost more to the state than the tax they provide. In contrast, men generate more tax revenue than they cost between 23 and 65 (a 43 year span). In the brief period in which women generate more or as much tax money than they consume, men out-score them by at least 3 times. By in large, the cumulative tax money given to women outweighs the tax money generated by women... The fact that feminists want a stronger government is not a coincidence. While historically, women had to choose a wealthy husband for resources, they can now stay single, be lesbians, marry a poor man, or use the sperm bank, and the state will still transfer male taxes to them. Interestingly, within 10 years of women’s suffrage, the government doubled their tax revenue and expenditure in the USA. The government has somehow become the new providing husband, by taking money from anonymous men who have no say about their money. While women are still strongly financially dependent on men, men are simply unable to use the money they make for their own interests. These findings show just how simplistic the notion of privilege is. While men make more on average, it allows women to have access to education, health, and services. The patriarchy is pretty generous after all."
The New Zealand paper this is based on is The Distribution of Income and Fiscal Incidence by Age and Gender: Some Evidence from New Zealand by Omar Aziz, Norman Gemmell and Athene Laws
Death of fair-skinned child among Jarawa tribe leaves Indian police puzzled - "Because the baby was fair skinned, it was assumed he had been fathered by an outsider, and killed according to a ritual custom of the tribe. In the past Indian authorities, who seek to interfere as little as possible with the aboriginal culture, have turned a blind eye to such incidents. Indeed, in the 200 years since British settlers arrived to set up a penal colony on the island, no Jarawa tribesman has even been named as a suspect in a crime... Samir Acharya, a local activist, told the New York Times that the Jarawa “have the right to maintain the purity of their race.” “If they decide such a child should be wasted, let them do it,” he said."
Cultural imperialism!
Post ID: 6920556812061664560
Monday, July 24, 2017
Links - 24th July 2017 (2)
The older the doctor, the higher the patient mortality rate, study finds - "doctors’ skills may deteriorate over time or simply become outdated. Older doctors may be more likely to rely on anecdotal rather than evidence-based practices. The flip-side is that younger doctors are freshly trained in the most effective practices... Older doctors who see a lot of patients may be forced to keep up with the most up-to-date methods. Conversely, they may get more patients because they keep up."
These two S’pore cheerleaders will always take cooler couple photos than you
The prom dress: An anthropological history of America's sexual coming-of-age costume - "It’s now a rite of passage in the social life of kids in the US, and over the decades it has been a space where teens navigate—and push back against—societal conventions about gender, sexuality, tradition, and values... for girls, the dress is much more an opportunity for them to display how they see themselves, and want others to see them. For many, that often includes a distinct whiff of sexuality... “The prom is a place where young women are able to try out different ways of being sexy in a limited liability contest.”... “I also overheard many girls proudly exchanging stories of their fathers’ utter discomfort in seeing their daughters in such sexy dresses, testimonies that the girls had succeeded in transforming themselves.”"
Kaiser Kuo's answer to How common is VPN usage in China to circumvent censorship? - Quora - "We estimate that no more than 3% of Internet users in countries that engage in substantial filtering use circumvention tools. The actual number is likely considerably less... The simple fact is that most of the Internet services that most Chinese people want to use are (surprise, surprise!) in Chinese, and the overwhelming majority of Internet services in Chinese are hosted in mainland China"
Perfection | Tell Me Something I Don't Know - "For hundreds of years, people have thought that kneading bread was required to get the strands of gluten proteins that are in wheat to align so that it will trap bubbles and you could have it rise and you could have nice fluffy bread. And the reality is that the proteins align pretty much by themselves in the presence of water...
A lot of the shoreline of New York city especially Manhattan and the older parts of the city are actually built out past the original island. And a lot of the times they use foundations made of wood. Of course wood is a natural biological material and it's subject to all kinds of decay, one of which is that it's the food source of tiny marine organisms called marine borers commonly that get into the wood and eat at it until it basically disintegrates. So this wasn't really a problem for a lot of the twentieth century because we have been piping out all this sewage and industrial waste into the water and a lot of the marine life had died out. The Clean Water Act came along... within the next decade or two a lot of these structures are going to be collapsing or going to need to be closed before they collapse to to keep the public safe"
When Payment Undermines the Pitch - "Incentivized advocates for a cause are perceived as less sincere than nonincentivized advocates and are ultimately less effective in persuading other people to donate. Further, the negative effects of incentives hold only when the incentives imply a selfish motive; advocates who are offered a matching incentive (i.e., who are told that the donations they successfully solicit will be matched), which is not incompatible with altruism, perform just as well as those who are not incentivized. Thus, incentives may affect prosocial outcomes in ways not previously investigated: by crowding out individuals’ sincerity of expression and thus their ability to gain support for a cause."
Long hair - what does the Bible saids? - "To sum it up we can see that God have nothing against men having long hair. So if you want to look real Metal, do as the Nazirites, grow your hair out and grow it long!"
This is from Metal for Jesus, Your Christian Metal Source
The bombing at a Manchester Ariana Grande show was an attack on girls and women.
Comments: "This article is gross. The bodies are still cooling and you're already trying to exploit them.. for what?"
"So does this mean that the Bataclan attack was specifically on hipster ironic-sleaze-rock fans? Get over yourself and pet causes."
"As a woman i find this article extremely insulting. I didn't see anyone labeling the bombing at the Germany vs France football match a direct attack on men and boys."
"Next time, they could blow up an audience composed of mostly males, then at least it won't be such a tragedy."
In pictures: ISIS takes control of its first city in the Philippines - "Overnight, heavy clashes erupted in the predominately Sunni city of Marawi in the southern Philippines after security forces and ISIS sleeper cells battled it out for hours on end... the Philippine Army withdrew from most of the city on Tuesday morning, thereby making it the first city in southeast Asia to come under Islamic State control... ISIS members have captured the main prison in Marawi and released over a hundred prisoners, many of whom are caliphate sympathisers and may join its ranks. Dozens of military vehicles and weapons were also captured during the battle"
It's all the Philippines's fault. They shouldn't have taken part in the Crusades or invaded Iraq
Only a fraction of terror suspects can be watched 24/7 - "MI5 can monitor fewer than 50 terrorist suspects around the clock, it can be disclosed, ahead of a report into the Lee Rigby murder that will highlight the limitations in watching terrorists in Britain... “If you assume that at any given point there are 500 or 600 potentially violent extremists in the country and that it takes 20, 25 people to keep somebody under surveillance 24/7, inevitably given that resources are limited you can only watch maybe 50, 60 people at any given time 24/7. “All the others, you have to opt for lesser forms of surveillance, so constantly you have to decide who is really dangerous, who is less dangerous and who is perhaps not even dangerous at all. And inevitably mistakes are being made.”"
Just because you're known to the authorities doesn't mean you can be prevented from unleashing terror
How Surveillance Turns Ordinary People Into Terrorism Suspects - "Several months after his home was searched, his telephone rang. It was a Chico police officer who told Gill to shut down his Facebook page. Gill refused, responding that there was only one reason he thought the police wanted his account deleted: its references to Islam. The phone call ended ominously with the officer warning Gill that he was on a "watchlist." The officer may have been referring to yet another burgeoning secret database that the federal government calls its "consolidated terrorism watchlist." Inclusion in this database—and on government blacklists that are generated from it—can bring more severe repercussions than unwarranted law enforcement attention. It can devastate lives."
Six out of 10 migrants to Europe come for 'economic reasons' and are not refugees, EU Vice President Frans Timmermans says - "More than half of all migrants to Europe are motivated by “economic reasons” and are not fleeing war or persecution, the vice-president of the European Commission has said. Dutch politician Frans Timmermans said the majority of migrants to Europe are from North African countries such as Morocco or Tunisia, where there is no conflict. “More than half of the people now coming to Europe come from countries where you can assume they have no reason whatsoever to ask for refugee status... more than half, 60 per cent,” he told Dutch broadcaster NOS."
Social Psychological Origins of Conspiracy Theories: The Case of the Jewish Conspiracy Theory in Malaysia - "Two studies examined correlates of belief in a Jewish conspiracy theory among Malays in Malaysia, a culture in which state-directed conspiracism as a means of dealing with perceived external and internal threats is widespread... belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory was associated with anti-Israeli attitudes, modern racism directed at the Chinese, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation. General conspiracist ideation did not emerge as a significant predictor once other variables had been accounted for. These results suggest that there may be specific cultural and social psychological forces that drive belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory within the Malaysian context. Specifically, belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory among Malaysian Malays appears to serve ideological needs and as a mask for anti-Chinese sentiment, which may in turn reaffirm their perceived ability to shape socio-political processes."
Jury Sides With Coca-Cola in False-Advertising Suit by Pom - WSJ - "Coke dropped its Minute Maid pomegranate-blueberry juice in 2014 amid weak sales but argued the drink’s labeling complied with Food and Drug Administration requirements despite containing less than 1% pomegranate juice... the disputed product was mostly apple and grape juice"
World's largest Muslim youth organisation calls for re-examination of Islamic text - "“A wide discrepancy now exists between the structure of Islamic orthodoxy and the context of Muslims’ actual reality," said Luthfi Thomafi, a member of GP Ansor's board. "(This is) due to immense changes that have occurred since the teachings of orthodox Islam, which became largely ossified towards the end of the medieval era.” "
Hopefully they don't get called apostates and murdered
Only 4% of British Muslims believe Al Qaeda planned 9/11 - "43% support the introduction of some forms of Sharia law.
44% believe schools should be able to insist on “a hijab or niqab” as part of the uniform.
15% believe art or music should not be taught in school (artistic representations of humans are regarded as idolatry in some forms of Islamic belief).
10% would not ban tutoring that “promotes extreme views or is deemed incompatible with fundamental British values”...
The poll mirrors an older survey taken by Gallup in 2009, which also found that many British Muslims hold extreme views. That older poll, a survey of 500 Muslims, discovered that zero percent — literally none of those surveyed — believed homosexuality was morally acceptable. A later survey, taken this year by ICM, found 52% of 1,000 Muslims surveyed believe homosexuality should be illegal... "it was noticeable how a gathering of otherwise ‘normal’, well-adjusted individuals could hold fairly outlandish views""
31% thought the American Government was responsible and 7% Jews. And these are British Muslims - not those in Muslim countries
Some would dismiss this because it's Policy Exchange, but Gallup and ICM have similarly alarming results
I knew Muslims who celebrated 9/11 – 15 years on, they know how naive they were - "Many of those Muslims who celebrated on 9/11 have learned that we can’t fixate on Muslim civilian casualties at the hands of non-Muslims and look the other way when people of our faith, and in the name of our religion, kill innocents. They have also learned that we can’t flirt with anti-Semitism (indulging in conspiracy theories such as ‘Israel knew about 9/11’) and then complain about the effects of Islamophobia. We can’t always be the victims of society – even if, all too often, we still are... In 2001, many of our communities in the West still relied on Muslim-majority countries to provide imported Imams. These scholars came from countries that lacked a fully developed civil society, and had no way of rationalising complex global events except by either gloating or blaming Israel... Sheikh Adel Kalbani, the former Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca (the closest thing to a Sunni Muslim Pope) acknowledged recently that Isis takes inspiration, albeit pervertedly, from much of the Islamic teachings in the Arab world. Kalbani’s message is vital because the silent majority can no longer afford to be silent; if you can march against Salman Rushdie or Israeli collateral damage in Gaza, then you can march against extremism too. Because when we say Isis has “nothing to do with Islam” we must qualify this: they have nothing to do with our Islam, the Islam practiced by the vast majority of Muslims today... The Prophet Muhammad instructed his followers that there would be constant “Mujaddids” – renewers or reformers – for his religion"
Cosmo Praises 'Muslim' For Helping Manchester Concert-Goers. Then Something Hilarious Happens. - "Turns out, the kind "Muslim" man is actually a Sikh, as is stated on the tweet Cosmo asked to use within their story. That's right, Cosmo thinks Sikhs are Muslims."
Scientists have worked out why flamingos stand on one leg - "Professor Young-Hui Chang from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Lena H Ting of Emory University conducted a series of experiments using the bodies of dead flamingos - and found it was easier to stand them up on one leg rather than two."
Alternative Reality: 55 Percent of Democrats Think Russia Could Have Manipulated Vote Totals to Help Trump Win - "Well, so much for Democrats being the more enlightened American political sect. It looks like the media’s overuse of the phrase “Russia hacked the 2016 election” has taken a real toll on our left-leaning friends. A recent YouGov survey asked whether it’s true of false that “Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump election President.” Turns out, 32 percent of Dems say it’s “probably true” and 23 percent say it’s “definitely true.” Republicans overwhelmingly reject this latest conspiracy theory. Only 12 percent say it’s “probably true” and a mere four percent say it’s “definitely true” that Russia changed the presidential election results by tinkering with vote totals. Independents concur, with 42 percent saying it’s “probably not true” and 26 percent saying it’s “definitely not true.”"
People's Daily just rewrote China's Korean War history last night : China - "In direct response to NK's accusation that "NK has been shielding China from the US for the past 70 years therefore China should be grateful to NK, and that China should stop testing NK's patience", People's Daily said "Had Kim's granddad not tried to force an unification, there wouldn't have been a Korean War, China wouldn't have suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, China wouldn't have had suffered 20 years of confrontational relations with the US, China would've unified Taiwan (Truman's administration publicly said they've given up on Taiwan before the Korean war), China bore most of the cost of NK's hubris." Why is this significant? People's Daily effectively said Kim's granddad started the Korean War. This is in direct contrast to all official versions of Chinese Korean War history, that SK and the US were the aggressors and China got involved defending a friend."
Macron’s victory — cause for hope or despair? - "The anachronism of the left-right ideological divide in France mirrors political developments in the United States and United Kingdom. Mr Donald Trump’s presidential campaign avoided stereotypical Republican discourses in favour of problem-oriented perspectives. In the UK, the Labour Party’s popularity declined sharply due to its incapacity to address the British electorate’s economic concerns and perceived threats to values and identity. These trends highlight that exclusive left- and right-wing discourses are rejected by constituencies because they fail to concomitantly address class and identity matters in societies"
S’pore groom gatecrashes as Chinese emperor, complete with eunuchs & concubines
Baby given gluten-free diet dies weighing just 9lbs in Belgium - "The parents determined their own diagnosis that their child was gluten intolerant and had a lactose allergy"
Daryl Bem proved ESP is real. Which means science is broken. - "Wu and the other women tested hundreds of their fellow undergrads. Most of the subjects did as they were told, got their money, and departed happily. A few students—all of them white guys, Wu remembers—would hang around to ask about the research and to probe for flaws in its design. Wu still didn’t believe in ESP, but she found herself defending the experiments to these mansplaining guinea pigs. The methodology was sound, she told them—as sound as that of any other psychology experiment... If he could get his mainstream colleagues to run the studies for themselves, and if they could find the same results, he’d be vindicated once and for all. To help get this project underway, Bem had granted researchers full access to his data and provided a detailed how-to guide for redoing his experiments—a level of transparency that was pretty much unheard of at the time... Bem’s colleagues in psychology had, for their part, been engaged in methodological debates for decades, with many pointing out that sample sizes were far too small, that treatments of statistics could be quite misleading, and that researchers often conjured their hypotheses after collecting all their data. And every once in a while, someone would bemoan the lack of replications in the research literature. (Notice how these concerns mirror those the parapsychological community alighted upon in the early 1980s.)... It’s plain to see that Bem achieved his major goal: to promote replications of the research into ESP. (“Everything rests on replication,” he told me.) As far as he and other parapsychologists are concerned, these replications have so far been equivocal. “I think the jury is still out,” says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at University of California–Santa Barbara who was one of the original peer reviewers for Bem’s paper. Schooler, who is very open to the evidence for ESP, admits it’s possible that Bem’s results are nothing more than artifacts of flawed experimental design. But then he says that precognition could be real. In fact, “there’s no reason why you can’t entertain both of these possibilities at once.” "
What does it say when only white guys are skeptical and they get dismissed as mansplainers?
These two S’pore cheerleaders will always take cooler couple photos than you
The prom dress: An anthropological history of America's sexual coming-of-age costume - "It’s now a rite of passage in the social life of kids in the US, and over the decades it has been a space where teens navigate—and push back against—societal conventions about gender, sexuality, tradition, and values... for girls, the dress is much more an opportunity for them to display how they see themselves, and want others to see them. For many, that often includes a distinct whiff of sexuality... “The prom is a place where young women are able to try out different ways of being sexy in a limited liability contest.”... “I also overheard many girls proudly exchanging stories of their fathers’ utter discomfort in seeing their daughters in such sexy dresses, testimonies that the girls had succeeded in transforming themselves.”"
Kaiser Kuo's answer to How common is VPN usage in China to circumvent censorship? - Quora - "We estimate that no more than 3% of Internet users in countries that engage in substantial filtering use circumvention tools. The actual number is likely considerably less... The simple fact is that most of the Internet services that most Chinese people want to use are (surprise, surprise!) in Chinese, and the overwhelming majority of Internet services in Chinese are hosted in mainland China"
Perfection | Tell Me Something I Don't Know - "For hundreds of years, people have thought that kneading bread was required to get the strands of gluten proteins that are in wheat to align so that it will trap bubbles and you could have it rise and you could have nice fluffy bread. And the reality is that the proteins align pretty much by themselves in the presence of water...
A lot of the shoreline of New York city especially Manhattan and the older parts of the city are actually built out past the original island. And a lot of the times they use foundations made of wood. Of course wood is a natural biological material and it's subject to all kinds of decay, one of which is that it's the food source of tiny marine organisms called marine borers commonly that get into the wood and eat at it until it basically disintegrates. So this wasn't really a problem for a lot of the twentieth century because we have been piping out all this sewage and industrial waste into the water and a lot of the marine life had died out. The Clean Water Act came along... within the next decade or two a lot of these structures are going to be collapsing or going to need to be closed before they collapse to to keep the public safe"
When Payment Undermines the Pitch - "Incentivized advocates for a cause are perceived as less sincere than nonincentivized advocates and are ultimately less effective in persuading other people to donate. Further, the negative effects of incentives hold only when the incentives imply a selfish motive; advocates who are offered a matching incentive (i.e., who are told that the donations they successfully solicit will be matched), which is not incompatible with altruism, perform just as well as those who are not incentivized. Thus, incentives may affect prosocial outcomes in ways not previously investigated: by crowding out individuals’ sincerity of expression and thus their ability to gain support for a cause."
Long hair - what does the Bible saids? - "To sum it up we can see that God have nothing against men having long hair. So if you want to look real Metal, do as the Nazirites, grow your hair out and grow it long!"
This is from Metal for Jesus, Your Christian Metal Source
The bombing at a Manchester Ariana Grande show was an attack on girls and women.
Comments: "This article is gross. The bodies are still cooling and you're already trying to exploit them.. for what?"
"So does this mean that the Bataclan attack was specifically on hipster ironic-sleaze-rock fans? Get over yourself and pet causes."
"As a woman i find this article extremely insulting. I didn't see anyone labeling the bombing at the Germany vs France football match a direct attack on men and boys."
"Next time, they could blow up an audience composed of mostly males, then at least it won't be such a tragedy."
In pictures: ISIS takes control of its first city in the Philippines - "Overnight, heavy clashes erupted in the predominately Sunni city of Marawi in the southern Philippines after security forces and ISIS sleeper cells battled it out for hours on end... the Philippine Army withdrew from most of the city on Tuesday morning, thereby making it the first city in southeast Asia to come under Islamic State control... ISIS members have captured the main prison in Marawi and released over a hundred prisoners, many of whom are caliphate sympathisers and may join its ranks. Dozens of military vehicles and weapons were also captured during the battle"
It's all the Philippines's fault. They shouldn't have taken part in the Crusades or invaded Iraq
Only a fraction of terror suspects can be watched 24/7 - "MI5 can monitor fewer than 50 terrorist suspects around the clock, it can be disclosed, ahead of a report into the Lee Rigby murder that will highlight the limitations in watching terrorists in Britain... “If you assume that at any given point there are 500 or 600 potentially violent extremists in the country and that it takes 20, 25 people to keep somebody under surveillance 24/7, inevitably given that resources are limited you can only watch maybe 50, 60 people at any given time 24/7. “All the others, you have to opt for lesser forms of surveillance, so constantly you have to decide who is really dangerous, who is less dangerous and who is perhaps not even dangerous at all. And inevitably mistakes are being made.”"
Just because you're known to the authorities doesn't mean you can be prevented from unleashing terror
How Surveillance Turns Ordinary People Into Terrorism Suspects - "Several months after his home was searched, his telephone rang. It was a Chico police officer who told Gill to shut down his Facebook page. Gill refused, responding that there was only one reason he thought the police wanted his account deleted: its references to Islam. The phone call ended ominously with the officer warning Gill that he was on a "watchlist." The officer may have been referring to yet another burgeoning secret database that the federal government calls its "consolidated terrorism watchlist." Inclusion in this database—and on government blacklists that are generated from it—can bring more severe repercussions than unwarranted law enforcement attention. It can devastate lives."
Six out of 10 migrants to Europe come for 'economic reasons' and are not refugees, EU Vice President Frans Timmermans says - "More than half of all migrants to Europe are motivated by “economic reasons” and are not fleeing war or persecution, the vice-president of the European Commission has said. Dutch politician Frans Timmermans said the majority of migrants to Europe are from North African countries such as Morocco or Tunisia, where there is no conflict. “More than half of the people now coming to Europe come from countries where you can assume they have no reason whatsoever to ask for refugee status... more than half, 60 per cent,” he told Dutch broadcaster NOS."
Social Psychological Origins of Conspiracy Theories: The Case of the Jewish Conspiracy Theory in Malaysia - "Two studies examined correlates of belief in a Jewish conspiracy theory among Malays in Malaysia, a culture in which state-directed conspiracism as a means of dealing with perceived external and internal threats is widespread... belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory was associated with anti-Israeli attitudes, modern racism directed at the Chinese, right-wing authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation. General conspiracist ideation did not emerge as a significant predictor once other variables had been accounted for. These results suggest that there may be specific cultural and social psychological forces that drive belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory within the Malaysian context. Specifically, belief in the Jewish conspiracy theory among Malaysian Malays appears to serve ideological needs and as a mask for anti-Chinese sentiment, which may in turn reaffirm their perceived ability to shape socio-political processes."
Jury Sides With Coca-Cola in False-Advertising Suit by Pom - WSJ - "Coke dropped its Minute Maid pomegranate-blueberry juice in 2014 amid weak sales but argued the drink’s labeling complied with Food and Drug Administration requirements despite containing less than 1% pomegranate juice... the disputed product was mostly apple and grape juice"
World's largest Muslim youth organisation calls for re-examination of Islamic text - "“A wide discrepancy now exists between the structure of Islamic orthodoxy and the context of Muslims’ actual reality," said Luthfi Thomafi, a member of GP Ansor's board. "(This is) due to immense changes that have occurred since the teachings of orthodox Islam, which became largely ossified towards the end of the medieval era.” "
Hopefully they don't get called apostates and murdered
Only 4% of British Muslims believe Al Qaeda planned 9/11 - "43% support the introduction of some forms of Sharia law.
44% believe schools should be able to insist on “a hijab or niqab” as part of the uniform.
15% believe art or music should not be taught in school (artistic representations of humans are regarded as idolatry in some forms of Islamic belief).
10% would not ban tutoring that “promotes extreme views or is deemed incompatible with fundamental British values”...
The poll mirrors an older survey taken by Gallup in 2009, which also found that many British Muslims hold extreme views. That older poll, a survey of 500 Muslims, discovered that zero percent — literally none of those surveyed — believed homosexuality was morally acceptable. A later survey, taken this year by ICM, found 52% of 1,000 Muslims surveyed believe homosexuality should be illegal... "it was noticeable how a gathering of otherwise ‘normal’, well-adjusted individuals could hold fairly outlandish views""
31% thought the American Government was responsible and 7% Jews. And these are British Muslims - not those in Muslim countries
Some would dismiss this because it's Policy Exchange, but Gallup and ICM have similarly alarming results
I knew Muslims who celebrated 9/11 – 15 years on, they know how naive they were - "Many of those Muslims who celebrated on 9/11 have learned that we can’t fixate on Muslim civilian casualties at the hands of non-Muslims and look the other way when people of our faith, and in the name of our religion, kill innocents. They have also learned that we can’t flirt with anti-Semitism (indulging in conspiracy theories such as ‘Israel knew about 9/11’) and then complain about the effects of Islamophobia. We can’t always be the victims of society – even if, all too often, we still are... In 2001, many of our communities in the West still relied on Muslim-majority countries to provide imported Imams. These scholars came from countries that lacked a fully developed civil society, and had no way of rationalising complex global events except by either gloating or blaming Israel... Sheikh Adel Kalbani, the former Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca (the closest thing to a Sunni Muslim Pope) acknowledged recently that Isis takes inspiration, albeit pervertedly, from much of the Islamic teachings in the Arab world. Kalbani’s message is vital because the silent majority can no longer afford to be silent; if you can march against Salman Rushdie or Israeli collateral damage in Gaza, then you can march against extremism too. Because when we say Isis has “nothing to do with Islam” we must qualify this: they have nothing to do with our Islam, the Islam practiced by the vast majority of Muslims today... The Prophet Muhammad instructed his followers that there would be constant “Mujaddids” – renewers or reformers – for his religion"
Cosmo Praises 'Muslim' For Helping Manchester Concert-Goers. Then Something Hilarious Happens. - "Turns out, the kind "Muslim" man is actually a Sikh, as is stated on the tweet Cosmo asked to use within their story. That's right, Cosmo thinks Sikhs are Muslims."
Scientists have worked out why flamingos stand on one leg - "Professor Young-Hui Chang from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Lena H Ting of Emory University conducted a series of experiments using the bodies of dead flamingos - and found it was easier to stand them up on one leg rather than two."
Alternative Reality: 55 Percent of Democrats Think Russia Could Have Manipulated Vote Totals to Help Trump Win - "Well, so much for Democrats being the more enlightened American political sect. It looks like the media’s overuse of the phrase “Russia hacked the 2016 election” has taken a real toll on our left-leaning friends. A recent YouGov survey asked whether it’s true of false that “Russia tampered with vote tallies in order to get Donald Trump election President.” Turns out, 32 percent of Dems say it’s “probably true” and 23 percent say it’s “definitely true.” Republicans overwhelmingly reject this latest conspiracy theory. Only 12 percent say it’s “probably true” and a mere four percent say it’s “definitely true” that Russia changed the presidential election results by tinkering with vote totals. Independents concur, with 42 percent saying it’s “probably not true” and 26 percent saying it’s “definitely not true.”"
People's Daily just rewrote China's Korean War history last night : China - "In direct response to NK's accusation that "NK has been shielding China from the US for the past 70 years therefore China should be grateful to NK, and that China should stop testing NK's patience", People's Daily said "Had Kim's granddad not tried to force an unification, there wouldn't have been a Korean War, China wouldn't have suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties, China wouldn't have had suffered 20 years of confrontational relations with the US, China would've unified Taiwan (Truman's administration publicly said they've given up on Taiwan before the Korean war), China bore most of the cost of NK's hubris." Why is this significant? People's Daily effectively said Kim's granddad started the Korean War. This is in direct contrast to all official versions of Chinese Korean War history, that SK and the US were the aggressors and China got involved defending a friend."
Macron’s victory — cause for hope or despair? - "The anachronism of the left-right ideological divide in France mirrors political developments in the United States and United Kingdom. Mr Donald Trump’s presidential campaign avoided stereotypical Republican discourses in favour of problem-oriented perspectives. In the UK, the Labour Party’s popularity declined sharply due to its incapacity to address the British electorate’s economic concerns and perceived threats to values and identity. These trends highlight that exclusive left- and right-wing discourses are rejected by constituencies because they fail to concomitantly address class and identity matters in societies"
S’pore groom gatecrashes as Chinese emperor, complete with eunuchs & concubines
Baby given gluten-free diet dies weighing just 9lbs in Belgium - "The parents determined their own diagnosis that their child was gluten intolerant and had a lactose allergy"
Daryl Bem proved ESP is real. Which means science is broken. - "Wu and the other women tested hundreds of their fellow undergrads. Most of the subjects did as they were told, got their money, and departed happily. A few students—all of them white guys, Wu remembers—would hang around to ask about the research and to probe for flaws in its design. Wu still didn’t believe in ESP, but she found herself defending the experiments to these mansplaining guinea pigs. The methodology was sound, she told them—as sound as that of any other psychology experiment... If he could get his mainstream colleagues to run the studies for themselves, and if they could find the same results, he’d be vindicated once and for all. To help get this project underway, Bem had granted researchers full access to his data and provided a detailed how-to guide for redoing his experiments—a level of transparency that was pretty much unheard of at the time... Bem’s colleagues in psychology had, for their part, been engaged in methodological debates for decades, with many pointing out that sample sizes were far too small, that treatments of statistics could be quite misleading, and that researchers often conjured their hypotheses after collecting all their data. And every once in a while, someone would bemoan the lack of replications in the research literature. (Notice how these concerns mirror those the parapsychological community alighted upon in the early 1980s.)... It’s plain to see that Bem achieved his major goal: to promote replications of the research into ESP. (“Everything rests on replication,” he told me.) As far as he and other parapsychologists are concerned, these replications have so far been equivocal. “I think the jury is still out,” says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at University of California–Santa Barbara who was one of the original peer reviewers for Bem’s paper. Schooler, who is very open to the evidence for ESP, admits it’s possible that Bem’s results are nothing more than artifacts of flawed experimental design. But then he says that precognition could be real. In fact, “there’s no reason why you can’t entertain both of these possibilities at once.” "
What does it say when only white guys are skeptical and they get dismissed as mansplainers?
Post ID: 3223151734051428099
Feminists' heterosexual relationships: more on dominance and mating
Feminists' heterosexual relationships: more on dominance and mating.
"The hypothesis that female dominance inhibits mating whereas male dominance facilitates it, and seemingly incongruous findings suggesting that dominant women take more initiative and are more interested than others in sex, are explored through comparison of feminist and control subjects, ie, women who were expected, a priori, to be located at widely separated points on a theoretical dominance continuum. Principal findings are the following: (1) sexual initiative and satisfaction appear to be greater among feminists than others, (2) there is no difference between groups in frequency of coitus in a present (or most recent) sexual relationship, but (3) there is a tendency for feminists to have had less stable first marriages than control subjects. These findings do permit more than one interpretation: the greater sexual satisfaction combined with marital instability among feminists may reflect their energy and willingness to change an unsatisfactory condition, or, in addition, the more general proposition that personal power is associated with positive sexual response in both men and women, so that there is minimal complementarity along this dimension. Both cultural and biologic factors appear to contribute to the relative instability of feminists' marriages...
The author's original hypothesis that female dominance inhibits mating whereas male dominance facilitates it was derived from empirical findings including (1) field observations of nonhuman primates that reveal that the mother/son incest taboo can be broken in the rare instance where the son challenges and then becomes dominant over his mother; (2) psychiatric studies that link various forms of male sexual dysfunction, including homosexuality3 and transvestism,' with having been reared by a very dominant mother; and (3) ethnological reports that show high divorce and infidelity rates in association with cultural patterns favoring female power. The dominance hypothesis also provides a parsimonious framework for understanding (4) experimental manipulations showing that sexually potent male bonnet macaques will not mate with females more dominant than themselves, as well as (5) psychiatric observations of the pathological condition in which male sexual arousal is dependent on degradation of the female,conversely, where male impotence and exhibitionism appear to be triggered by relationships with dominant women...
The problem was approached through comparison of mating patterns and sexual histories of (1) women active in the feminist movement and (2) more traditionally oriented women from the population at large. Assuming that the self-avowed character and goals of the women's liberation movement virtually assure that its participants have espoused demands for parity in male-female statuses, and also that power is more likely to be acquired when it is a conscious objective, there is face validity in expecting that a women's liberation group and a nonfeminist group will differ substantially in their level of dominating within heterosexual couple relationships. Thus, the research is designed to build in a wide range of values for relative male-female power.
The sample consists of 24 feminists and 26 control subjects, all of whom have a primarily heterosexual orientation, are between 21 and 39 years of age, and have completed at least one year of college. Feminists are defined as having attended, at least once, an organized women's meeting or consciousness-raising group and as being in sympathy with a majority of the goals of the women's movement... Although only one feminist who was asked to participate refused, over three quarters of married women from the general population refused. This response pattern may indicate that the most traditionally oriented women are under-represented in the control group, creating an experimental bias that probably minimizes real differences between feminists and others...
There is no difference between groups on age of first coitus or in frequency of coitus in ongoing relationships, which averages slightly less than twice a week for both groups. However, there is a nonsignificant tendency for feminists to have had less-stable marriages than more traditionally oriented women, suggesting interruptions in coital activity. Although one control subject and no feminist had been divorced twice, feminists were more than twice as likely as controls to have terminated a first marriage.
Information on their divorce or separation provided by nine of the 11 women suggests qualitative differences between feminists and controls. More traditionally oriented women report development of marital crises in the context of their having been ill-used in spite of attempting to be compliant under difficult circumstances; on the contrary, in describing their failed marriage, feminists inject themes of competition, a power struggle, or the incompatibility of marriage with other valued goals. Nonetheless, a rating of generalized hostility toward men reveals no difference between groups; a process rather than preconceived attitudes appears to explain marital disruption.
Finally, sexual dysfunction may have a higher incidence among feminists' husbands than others; episodic impotence was an associated complaint in two cases where feminists and their spouses sought professional assistance in increasing coital frequency; but partially balancing this, the second husband of one nonfeminist was repeatedly arrested for indecent exposure."
It's not surprising feminists don't have less sex. Due to female mate choice you can always find a man to bang you. The question is why feminists don't have *more* sex given that they are against slut shaming etc.
This is evidence that feminists are more likely to get divorced.
Feminists having more extramarital sex also strongly suggests that they're more likely to cheat on their husbands.
They conclude that feminists and non-feminists are equally dissatisfied in their marriages (and no doubt feminists will trumpet that this just shows that those who get divorced are exiting unhappy marriages), but considering that feminists have had more marriages, their average dissatisfaction in their marriages is most likely higher (i.e. survivorship bias).
Ultimately when feminism is taken as a proxy for dominance, there are too many omitted variables to conclude that sexual dominance in women increases sexual satisfaction (given evidence to the contrary).
"The hypothesis that female dominance inhibits mating whereas male dominance facilitates it, and seemingly incongruous findings suggesting that dominant women take more initiative and are more interested than others in sex, are explored through comparison of feminist and control subjects, ie, women who were expected, a priori, to be located at widely separated points on a theoretical dominance continuum. Principal findings are the following: (1) sexual initiative and satisfaction appear to be greater among feminists than others, (2) there is no difference between groups in frequency of coitus in a present (or most recent) sexual relationship, but (3) there is a tendency for feminists to have had less stable first marriages than control subjects. These findings do permit more than one interpretation: the greater sexual satisfaction combined with marital instability among feminists may reflect their energy and willingness to change an unsatisfactory condition, or, in addition, the more general proposition that personal power is associated with positive sexual response in both men and women, so that there is minimal complementarity along this dimension. Both cultural and biologic factors appear to contribute to the relative instability of feminists' marriages...
The author's original hypothesis that female dominance inhibits mating whereas male dominance facilitates it was derived from empirical findings including (1) field observations of nonhuman primates that reveal that the mother/son incest taboo can be broken in the rare instance where the son challenges and then becomes dominant over his mother; (2) psychiatric studies that link various forms of male sexual dysfunction, including homosexuality3 and transvestism,' with having been reared by a very dominant mother; and (3) ethnological reports that show high divorce and infidelity rates in association with cultural patterns favoring female power. The dominance hypothesis also provides a parsimonious framework for understanding (4) experimental manipulations showing that sexually potent male bonnet macaques will not mate with females more dominant than themselves, as well as (5) psychiatric observations of the pathological condition in which male sexual arousal is dependent on degradation of the female,conversely, where male impotence and exhibitionism appear to be triggered by relationships with dominant women...
The problem was approached through comparison of mating patterns and sexual histories of (1) women active in the feminist movement and (2) more traditionally oriented women from the population at large. Assuming that the self-avowed character and goals of the women's liberation movement virtually assure that its participants have espoused demands for parity in male-female statuses, and also that power is more likely to be acquired when it is a conscious objective, there is face validity in expecting that a women's liberation group and a nonfeminist group will differ substantially in their level of dominating within heterosexual couple relationships. Thus, the research is designed to build in a wide range of values for relative male-female power.
The sample consists of 24 feminists and 26 control subjects, all of whom have a primarily heterosexual orientation, are between 21 and 39 years of age, and have completed at least one year of college. Feminists are defined as having attended, at least once, an organized women's meeting or consciousness-raising group and as being in sympathy with a majority of the goals of the women's movement... Although only one feminist who was asked to participate refused, over three quarters of married women from the general population refused. This response pattern may indicate that the most traditionally oriented women are under-represented in the control group, creating an experimental bias that probably minimizes real differences between feminists and others...
There is no difference between groups on age of first coitus or in frequency of coitus in ongoing relationships, which averages slightly less than twice a week for both groups. However, there is a nonsignificant tendency for feminists to have had less-stable marriages than more traditionally oriented women, suggesting interruptions in coital activity. Although one control subject and no feminist had been divorced twice, feminists were more than twice as likely as controls to have terminated a first marriage.
Information on their divorce or separation provided by nine of the 11 women suggests qualitative differences between feminists and controls. More traditionally oriented women report development of marital crises in the context of their having been ill-used in spite of attempting to be compliant under difficult circumstances; on the contrary, in describing their failed marriage, feminists inject themes of competition, a power struggle, or the incompatibility of marriage with other valued goals. Nonetheless, a rating of generalized hostility toward men reveals no difference between groups; a process rather than preconceived attitudes appears to explain marital disruption.
Finally, sexual dysfunction may have a higher incidence among feminists' husbands than others; episodic impotence was an associated complaint in two cases where feminists and their spouses sought professional assistance in increasing coital frequency; but partially balancing this, the second husband of one nonfeminist was repeatedly arrested for indecent exposure."
It's not surprising feminists don't have less sex. Due to female mate choice you can always find a man to bang you. The question is why feminists don't have *more* sex given that they are against slut shaming etc.
This is evidence that feminists are more likely to get divorced.
Feminists having more extramarital sex also strongly suggests that they're more likely to cheat on their husbands.
They conclude that feminists and non-feminists are equally dissatisfied in their marriages (and no doubt feminists will trumpet that this just shows that those who get divorced are exiting unhappy marriages), but considering that feminists have had more marriages, their average dissatisfaction in their marriages is most likely higher (i.e. survivorship bias).
Ultimately when feminism is taken as a proxy for dominance, there are too many omitted variables to conclude that sexual dominance in women increases sexual satisfaction (given evidence to the contrary).
Post ID: 4456545782434127890
Links - 24th July 2017 (1)
Fossil fuels are far deadlier than nuclear power - "“There is no question,” says Joseph Romm, an energy expert at the Center for American Progress in Washington DC. “Nothing is worse than fossil fuels for killing people.” A 2002 review by the IAE put together existing studies to compare fatalities per unit of power produced for several leading energy sources. The agency examined the life cycle of each fuel from extraction to post-use and included deaths from accidents as well as long-term exposure to emissions or radiation. Nuclear came out best, and coal was the deadliest energy source. The explanation lies in the large number of deaths caused by pollution... When, in 1975, about 30 dams in central China failed in short succession due to severe flooding, an estimated 230,000 people died. Include the toll from this single event, and fatalities from hydropower far exceed the number of deaths from all other energy sources."
Deaths Draw Attention to Wall Street’s Grueling Pace - NYTimes.com - "Goldman introduced a policy for the 2,900 undergraduate summer interns in investment banking: Leave the office before midnight each day. No more all-nighters. “The policy is consistent with our goal of providing each intern with a challenging and meaningful experience,” said Michael DuVally, a Goldman spokesman. As for its full-time junior bankers, Goldman tells them to stay out of the office from 9 p.m. Friday to 9 a.m. Sunday. It closely monitors violations; only senior partners are allowed to authorize exceptions, and generally just for deals that need to be completed before the markets open on a Monday morning. Of the 1,500 analysts and associates in Goldman’s investment banking business, 15 or 20 at a time are permitted to work through the weekend. Other firms have instituted their own version of these rules. Barclays forbids analysts to work more than 12 days in a row. JPMorgan Chase has given analysts the option of having one “protected weekend” each month — meaning no work on Saturday or Sunday — as long as it is scheduled in advance. After Mr. Erhardt’s death, Bank of America put in place measures to improve supervision and ensure that its employees take off a minimum of four weekend days a month... he was told of a game junior bankers play called “Misery Poker,” in which they sit around and perversely brag about their workload. “It’s a badge of honor, and that culture is one reason why I am not at all hopeful about these rules that put caps on how much people are allowed to work, because in many cases the severe culture is being self-imposed,” he explains.... Mr. Hughes wonders why Wall Street doesn’t just hire more people and pay everyone a little less?"
Risk expert: Why radiation fears are often exaggerated - "Nuclear radiation ticks all the boxes for increasing the fear factor. It is invisible, an unknowable quantity. People don’t feel in control of it, and they don’t understand it. They feel it is imposed upon them and that it is unnatural. It has the dread quality of causing cancer and birth defects. Nuclear power has been staggeringly safe, but that doesn’t stop people being anxious about it, just as airplanes and trains are an amazingly safe way to travel but people still worry far more about plane crashes than car crashes... One of the biggest risks from radiation is the psychological damage it causes. After events like the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, and the Chernobyl accident, there was substantial psychological trauma, even among people who were not affected, because there is such a fear of radiation and its long-term consequences."
Animals feel the pain of religious slaughter - "Brain signals have shown that calves do appear to feel pain when slaughtered according to Jewish and Muslim religious law, strengthening the case for adapting the practices to make them more humane. “I think our work is the best evidence yet that it’s painful,” says Craig Johnson, who led the study at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand... His team also showed that if the animal is concussed through stunning, signals corresponding to pain disappear... Ghanem cites a 1978 study relying on EEG measurements led by Wilhelm Schulze of the University of Hanover, Germany, apparently concluding that halal slaughter was more humane than slaughter following stunning. But Schulze himself, who died in 2002, warned in his report that the stunning technique may not have functioned properly."
Finally, something building on and contextualising Schulze's results, which Muslims like to throw out when promoting Halal slaughter
Man, 44, fitted with bionic penis after childhood accident loses his virginity to a sex worker and says a 'big burden' has been lifted - "He first met Charlotte, who specialises in disabled clients, for a dinner date and then got to know each other better over a few days and stayed in a central London hotel. Mohammed was nervous and on the first attempt, his penis malfunctioned with one side of the pump failing to properly inflate... After their session together, which lasted for an hour and three quarters, Charlotte said she was 'impressed'."
Edinburgh man with 'bionic penis' has scores of women contact him for for sex - "Since it was fitted in March the man-made organ has given Mr Abad, who lost his natural penis as a boy in a road accident, 50 sexual offers from intrigued women. But despite the deluge of interest the Edinburgh man hasn't activated his pride and joy since sleeping with sex worker Charlotte Rose eight months ago. He said working 14-hour shifts meant he is 'just too tired for sex'... Mr Abad's memorable night with Miss Rose came after the 35-year-old escort waived her usual £160-an-hour fee. "
There’s a museum for everything. Even Civil War battles — depicted by cats. - The Washington Post - "We have far more museums than other countries, somewhere between 28,000 and 35,000, depending on which museum organization is counting. (Most likely, we have more museum organizations, too.) This is more than double the number since the 1990s, according to the Institute of Museum and Library Services... “The growth in museums,” says Marjorie Schwarzer, who teaches museum studies at the University of San Francisco, “comes from nostalgia, nerds and natural collectors. Most people can’t collect a Renoir, but they can collect old hammers.”"
Taiwanese woman with terminal illness fulfils wedding photo shoot dream - alone
What’s the goal of “women’s studies”? - "one future pedagogical priority of women’s studies is to train students not only to master a body of knowledge but also to serve as symbolic “viruses” that infect, unsettle, and disrupt traditional and entrenched fields. In this essay, we first posit how the metaphor of the virus in part exemplifies an ideal feminist pedagogy, and we then investigate how both women’s studies and the spread of actual viruses (e.g., Ebola, HIV) produce similar kinds of emotional responses in others. By looking at triviality, mockery, panic, and anger that women’s studies as a field elicits, we conclude by outlining the stakes of framing women’s studies as an infectious, insurrectional, and potentially dangerous, field of study. In doing so, we frame two new priorities for women’s studies - training male students as viruses... Links (fixed, post from here) (bulk here so no slowdown) (newer).. This is one area of academia, it seems, where a scholarly discipline not only has explicit political goals, and a point of view that it must inculcate into students, but makes these things public. I can’t think of any other disciples with such a nakedly obvious agenda, except other areas of “cultural studies.”"
White nationalist 'asked black staff member for help' during row at gym - "Christine Fair, an associate professor at Georgetown University, recently spotted Mr Spencer while working out at the gym in Alexandria, Virginia. She approached him and challenged him, at which point, she says, Spencer appealed for a gym employee - a black woman - to come to his aid... Dr. Fair, who specialises in peace and securities studies, also wrote: "As a white woman, I find his membership at this gym to be unacceptable. I found his membership at this gym to be an unfair burden upon the women and people of color–and white male allies of the same." Mr Spencer later received a message from the gym informing him his membership was being terminated... Of the confrontation with Dr Fair, he said: "I don't come to the gym to do politics. But she started screeching and yelling all this stuff."
So if you're a liberal, you can harass someone in public who's minding his own business - and he will get thrown out, not you
Georgetown prof who harassed pro-Trump colleague brags about harassing alt-right leader at the gym - "Fair can’t resist showing off her superior vocabulary, calling Spencer a “pendulous poltroon” (floppy coward), “flaccid, sorry excuse of a man” and “pusillanimous shitbird.” She can’t resist joking about violently raping him as if she were criminally hazing a Greek pledge:
Also..fuck him again. With a giant strap-on and no lube... She even threatened to organize a lawsuit against the gym on behalf of its employees, as well as a boycott, if it didn’t ban Spencer and fire the general manager who tried to protect a customer who did nothing more than work out by his lonesome, unlike a certain shrill elitist with no self-restraint... The professor, of course, conflated harassing someone in public with the civil rights movement of the 1960s... “I told the fellow, ‘I think we can have a deal here: You don’t let any more Nazis in, and I won’t be making a scene.’ ”"
If a liberal threatens someone who disagrees with her with rape, does it count as rape culture?
Georgetown prof who confronted Richard Spencer at gym not shy attacking opponents - "C. Christine Fair, an associate professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown vented her anger on social media back in 2016 when she went after a former friend, Asra Nomani, a "lifelong liberal" who wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about her decision, as a Muslim immigrant, to vote for Donald Trump. That conservative Daily Caller said that led Fair to go "on a 31-day screed against Nomani spanning across Twitter and Facebook." "I've written you off as a human being," Fair wrote in one message, according to The Washington Post. "Your vote helped normalize Nazis in D.C. What don't you understand, you clueless dolt?""
One response to college excesses is to say that we shouldn't take 20 year olds seriously. But with so many professors doing this... (See: Lars Maischak, Robert Weide, Marcellus Andrews, Kevin Allred, Melissa Click etc
Addendum: Charles H.F. Davis
'F**K YOU': Georgetown Prof Loses It On Muslim Trump Voter - "Nomani sent the formal complaint Dec. 23, the same day Fair called her an atheist on Twitter. Publicly stating a Muslim is an apostate by calling them an atheist on Twitter could have serious repercussions. Radical Islamic extremists often declare civilians apostates before attacking them, because in their interpretation of the Quran, renouncing Islam is punishable by death... Fair’s personal website says “she can cause trouble in multiple languages,” and her YouTube features videos like “Introducing the Pussy Avenger” and “Tales of My Pussy.” Other notable commentary on Fair’s public Facebook includes calling future first lady Melania Trump a “soft porn star,” lamenting that “gun nuts don’t shoot each other,” and supporting Black Lives Matter."
Tibetan nun becomes fetish queen after Indian massage 'reawakened her sexuality'
My Quest To Seduce The Grim Reaper In The Sims 4
Cannes: Boo Netflix, But Studios and Theaters Are Killing Movies - "Cannes is the home of the elite, but we no longer live in a world in which most filmmakers are free to pursue their visions, backed by fawning movie studios. In fact, despite the explosion of outlets and interest, it’s harder than ever to get a studio to back an original movie out of the gate. More and more, only when a movie is independently financed and finished do studio execs consider distributing it, and often, that’s just to get their names on Oscar contenders. Instead, studios have become obsessed with massive franchises that can produce sequel after sequel, ancillary products like toys and theme parks, and can be sold to the massive overseas audience without much translation; this is why the Minions are really the future of studio entertainment... Critics get to see most movies for free, and if they miss the press screenings, they usually live in cities where all new movies are out in theaters. The specialty indie-theater scenes in New York, L.A., and Austin, along with a few other cities, are thriving, making it feasible to see any notable new foreign release on the big screen. But for the most part, indie theaters across the country are shutting down, victims of digital conversion costs and ticket prices as much as the competition in people’s living rooms."
The jumbo jet transformed into a hostel at Stockholm, Arlanda
Fixing the Singapore transport system will take some guts - "If you want to keep telling people that they should aspire to be rich, and that means living a high-life and getting multi-tasking work done quickly in the world’s most expensive city, they’ll never consider taking life in the slower lane, both figuratively and literally."
Gay Activists Leave Venezuela Because People Are Too Starving To Care About LGBTQ Rights
Are Tories the workers' party? Labour polling figures suggest they are - " Jeremy Corbyn appears in this election campaign to have achieved something even Ed Miliband was unable to do: lose the majority support not only of Britain’s skilled workers, dubbed social class C2 by the pollsters, but also the DEs – the semi-skilled, unskilled and unemployed."
Biracial Asian Americans and Mental Health - "34 percent of biracial individuals in a national survey had been diagnosed with a psychological disorder, such as anxiety, depression or substance abuse, versus 17 percent of monoracial individuals. The higher rate held up even after the researchers controlled for differences between the groups in age, gender and life stress, among other factors."
This might be due to an obsession with identity politics, since mixed race people don't fit anywhere
Why Don’t the Japanese Give Priority to the Elderly on Public Transportation? | Japan Info - "I asked my neighbor – (an elderly lady who is also my landlord) about what I saw when I used public transportation and she explained that whenever she get on the bus and someone offers her a seat, she would come up with the thought: “Ah~ Am I becoming so old that I need a young man to give me priority?” This would remind her, “You’re getting old!” Also, she was sure that there are many other people in the same situation. I myself once suffered the same awkwardness when I offered my seat to a woman and her children in the bus, but the result was, no matter how much she kept saying thank you to me, she resisted sitting on that seat. Recently, a Japanese friend just told me: “Even if you have the good will of offering your seat, it doesn’t mean other people have to accept that kindness of yours”. There are some people who are afraid they will cause you “inconvenience or trouble” or simply “don’t want to receive your pity”. As a matter of fact, because Japan is a country which has a growing population of the elderly, their perspective on giving priority to “elderly” somehow different from most other Asia countries"
This is why I don't ride public transportation - 9GAG
Why we do not sleep around all that much any more - "in agricultural societies the populations rapidly expanded, so an infection in a polygynous group would quickly spread and become endemic. A critical mass of people would ensure STIs stay around... Land became increasingly scarce in agricultural societies. Splitting it up among numerous heirs would reduce its value. Social monogamy provided a solution, as only true heirs would inherit their parents' estate."
Bike lock developed that makes thieves immediately vomit - "A thief could also simply return to the spent lock, though Idzkowski insisted this would not be easy, because the noxious spray clings to skin and clothing. “You’re basically just puking on yourself the entire time,” he said. “They could change all their clothes, shower, if the bike is still there come out and cut the remaining 75% of the lock. You can’t prevent a theft 100%, so that’s why we call it a deterrent lock, not a solution. “All you have to do is be better than the bike across the street.”"
"Don't tell me to lock my bicycle, tell bicycle thieves not to steal them"
According to feminists, rape prevention tips just mean the would-be rapist will just rape someone else
Innocent man burned to death by vigilante neighbours who mistook him for paedophile - "Bijan Ebrahimi, a keen gardener, had taken photographs of youths vandalising his hanging baskets and intended to hand them to police as evidence. But someone saw him with the camera and told police that the 44-year-old, who was registered disabled and unable to work, had taken pictures of children. Police went to his flat. As officers took Mr Ebrahimi away for questioning, other residents on his estate gathered in the street and chanted, ‘Paedo, paedo’... James, 24, beat Mr Ebrahimi unconscious and then with the help of another neighbour, Stephen Norley, dragged Mr Ebrahimi into the street, doused him in white spirit and set him on fire."
When you have a moral panic about "protecting children"...
Deaths Draw Attention to Wall Street’s Grueling Pace - NYTimes.com - "Goldman introduced a policy for the 2,900 undergraduate summer interns in investment banking: Leave the office before midnight each day. No more all-nighters. “The policy is consistent with our goal of providing each intern with a challenging and meaningful experience,” said Michael DuVally, a Goldman spokesman. As for its full-time junior bankers, Goldman tells them to stay out of the office from 9 p.m. Friday to 9 a.m. Sunday. It closely monitors violations; only senior partners are allowed to authorize exceptions, and generally just for deals that need to be completed before the markets open on a Monday morning. Of the 1,500 analysts and associates in Goldman’s investment banking business, 15 or 20 at a time are permitted to work through the weekend. Other firms have instituted their own version of these rules. Barclays forbids analysts to work more than 12 days in a row. JPMorgan Chase has given analysts the option of having one “protected weekend” each month — meaning no work on Saturday or Sunday — as long as it is scheduled in advance. After Mr. Erhardt’s death, Bank of America put in place measures to improve supervision and ensure that its employees take off a minimum of four weekend days a month... he was told of a game junior bankers play called “Misery Poker,” in which they sit around and perversely brag about their workload. “It’s a badge of honor, and that culture is one reason why I am not at all hopeful about these rules that put caps on how much people are allowed to work, because in many cases the severe culture is being self-imposed,” he explains.... Mr. Hughes wonders why Wall Street doesn’t just hire more people and pay everyone a little less?"
Risk expert: Why radiation fears are often exaggerated - "Nuclear radiation ticks all the boxes for increasing the fear factor. It is invisible, an unknowable quantity. People don’t feel in control of it, and they don’t understand it. They feel it is imposed upon them and that it is unnatural. It has the dread quality of causing cancer and birth defects. Nuclear power has been staggeringly safe, but that doesn’t stop people being anxious about it, just as airplanes and trains are an amazingly safe way to travel but people still worry far more about plane crashes than car crashes... One of the biggest risks from radiation is the psychological damage it causes. After events like the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, and the Chernobyl accident, there was substantial psychological trauma, even among people who were not affected, because there is such a fear of radiation and its long-term consequences."
Animals feel the pain of religious slaughter - "Brain signals have shown that calves do appear to feel pain when slaughtered according to Jewish and Muslim religious law, strengthening the case for adapting the practices to make them more humane. “I think our work is the best evidence yet that it’s painful,” says Craig Johnson, who led the study at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand... His team also showed that if the animal is concussed through stunning, signals corresponding to pain disappear... Ghanem cites a 1978 study relying on EEG measurements led by Wilhelm Schulze of the University of Hanover, Germany, apparently concluding that halal slaughter was more humane than slaughter following stunning. But Schulze himself, who died in 2002, warned in his report that the stunning technique may not have functioned properly."
Finally, something building on and contextualising Schulze's results, which Muslims like to throw out when promoting Halal slaughter
Man, 44, fitted with bionic penis after childhood accident loses his virginity to a sex worker and says a 'big burden' has been lifted - "He first met Charlotte, who specialises in disabled clients, for a dinner date and then got to know each other better over a few days and stayed in a central London hotel. Mohammed was nervous and on the first attempt, his penis malfunctioned with one side of the pump failing to properly inflate... After their session together, which lasted for an hour and three quarters, Charlotte said she was 'impressed'."
Edinburgh man with 'bionic penis' has scores of women contact him for for sex - "Since it was fitted in March the man-made organ has given Mr Abad, who lost his natural penis as a boy in a road accident, 50 sexual offers from intrigued women. But despite the deluge of interest the Edinburgh man hasn't activated his pride and joy since sleeping with sex worker Charlotte Rose eight months ago. He said working 14-hour shifts meant he is 'just too tired for sex'... Mr Abad's memorable night with Miss Rose came after the 35-year-old escort waived her usual £160-an-hour fee. "
There’s a museum for everything. Even Civil War battles — depicted by cats. - The Washington Post - "We have far more museums than other countries, somewhere between 28,000 and 35,000, depending on which museum organization is counting. (Most likely, we have more museum organizations, too.) This is more than double the number since the 1990s, according to the Institute of Museum and Library Services... “The growth in museums,” says Marjorie Schwarzer, who teaches museum studies at the University of San Francisco, “comes from nostalgia, nerds and natural collectors. Most people can’t collect a Renoir, but they can collect old hammers.”"
Taiwanese woman with terminal illness fulfils wedding photo shoot dream - alone
What’s the goal of “women’s studies”? - "one future pedagogical priority of women’s studies is to train students not only to master a body of knowledge but also to serve as symbolic “viruses” that infect, unsettle, and disrupt traditional and entrenched fields. In this essay, we first posit how the metaphor of the virus in part exemplifies an ideal feminist pedagogy, and we then investigate how both women’s studies and the spread of actual viruses (e.g., Ebola, HIV) produce similar kinds of emotional responses in others. By looking at triviality, mockery, panic, and anger that women’s studies as a field elicits, we conclude by outlining the stakes of framing women’s studies as an infectious, insurrectional, and potentially dangerous, field of study. In doing so, we frame two new priorities for women’s studies - training male students as viruses... Links (fixed, post from here) (bulk here so no slowdown) (newer).. This is one area of academia, it seems, where a scholarly discipline not only has explicit political goals, and a point of view that it must inculcate into students, but makes these things public. I can’t think of any other disciples with such a nakedly obvious agenda, except other areas of “cultural studies.”"
White nationalist 'asked black staff member for help' during row at gym - "Christine Fair, an associate professor at Georgetown University, recently spotted Mr Spencer while working out at the gym in Alexandria, Virginia. She approached him and challenged him, at which point, she says, Spencer appealed for a gym employee - a black woman - to come to his aid... Dr. Fair, who specialises in peace and securities studies, also wrote: "As a white woman, I find his membership at this gym to be unacceptable. I found his membership at this gym to be an unfair burden upon the women and people of color–and white male allies of the same." Mr Spencer later received a message from the gym informing him his membership was being terminated... Of the confrontation with Dr Fair, he said: "I don't come to the gym to do politics. But she started screeching and yelling all this stuff."
So if you're a liberal, you can harass someone in public who's minding his own business - and he will get thrown out, not you
Georgetown prof who harassed pro-Trump colleague brags about harassing alt-right leader at the gym - "Fair can’t resist showing off her superior vocabulary, calling Spencer a “pendulous poltroon” (floppy coward), “flaccid, sorry excuse of a man” and “pusillanimous shitbird.” She can’t resist joking about violently raping him as if she were criminally hazing a Greek pledge:
Also..fuck him again. With a giant strap-on and no lube... She even threatened to organize a lawsuit against the gym on behalf of its employees, as well as a boycott, if it didn’t ban Spencer and fire the general manager who tried to protect a customer who did nothing more than work out by his lonesome, unlike a certain shrill elitist with no self-restraint... The professor, of course, conflated harassing someone in public with the civil rights movement of the 1960s... “I told the fellow, ‘I think we can have a deal here: You don’t let any more Nazis in, and I won’t be making a scene.’ ”"
If a liberal threatens someone who disagrees with her with rape, does it count as rape culture?
Georgetown prof who confronted Richard Spencer at gym not shy attacking opponents - "C. Christine Fair, an associate professor at the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown vented her anger on social media back in 2016 when she went after a former friend, Asra Nomani, a "lifelong liberal" who wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post about her decision, as a Muslim immigrant, to vote for Donald Trump. That conservative Daily Caller said that led Fair to go "on a 31-day screed against Nomani spanning across Twitter and Facebook." "I've written you off as a human being," Fair wrote in one message, according to The Washington Post. "Your vote helped normalize Nazis in D.C. What don't you understand, you clueless dolt?""
One response to college excesses is to say that we shouldn't take 20 year olds seriously. But with so many professors doing this... (See: Lars Maischak, Robert Weide, Marcellus Andrews, Kevin Allred, Melissa Click etc
Addendum: Charles H.F. Davis
'F**K YOU': Georgetown Prof Loses It On Muslim Trump Voter - "Nomani sent the formal complaint Dec. 23, the same day Fair called her an atheist on Twitter. Publicly stating a Muslim is an apostate by calling them an atheist on Twitter could have serious repercussions. Radical Islamic extremists often declare civilians apostates before attacking them, because in their interpretation of the Quran, renouncing Islam is punishable by death... Fair’s personal website says “she can cause trouble in multiple languages,” and her YouTube features videos like “Introducing the Pussy Avenger” and “Tales of My Pussy.” Other notable commentary on Fair’s public Facebook includes calling future first lady Melania Trump a “soft porn star,” lamenting that “gun nuts don’t shoot each other,” and supporting Black Lives Matter."
Tibetan nun becomes fetish queen after Indian massage 'reawakened her sexuality'
My Quest To Seduce The Grim Reaper In The Sims 4
Cannes: Boo Netflix, But Studios and Theaters Are Killing Movies - "Cannes is the home of the elite, but we no longer live in a world in which most filmmakers are free to pursue their visions, backed by fawning movie studios. In fact, despite the explosion of outlets and interest, it’s harder than ever to get a studio to back an original movie out of the gate. More and more, only when a movie is independently financed and finished do studio execs consider distributing it, and often, that’s just to get their names on Oscar contenders. Instead, studios have become obsessed with massive franchises that can produce sequel after sequel, ancillary products like toys and theme parks, and can be sold to the massive overseas audience without much translation; this is why the Minions are really the future of studio entertainment... Critics get to see most movies for free, and if they miss the press screenings, they usually live in cities where all new movies are out in theaters. The specialty indie-theater scenes in New York, L.A., and Austin, along with a few other cities, are thriving, making it feasible to see any notable new foreign release on the big screen. But for the most part, indie theaters across the country are shutting down, victims of digital conversion costs and ticket prices as much as the competition in people’s living rooms."
The jumbo jet transformed into a hostel at Stockholm, Arlanda
Fixing the Singapore transport system will take some guts - "If you want to keep telling people that they should aspire to be rich, and that means living a high-life and getting multi-tasking work done quickly in the world’s most expensive city, they’ll never consider taking life in the slower lane, both figuratively and literally."
Gay Activists Leave Venezuela Because People Are Too Starving To Care About LGBTQ Rights
Are Tories the workers' party? Labour polling figures suggest they are - " Jeremy Corbyn appears in this election campaign to have achieved something even Ed Miliband was unable to do: lose the majority support not only of Britain’s skilled workers, dubbed social class C2 by the pollsters, but also the DEs – the semi-skilled, unskilled and unemployed."
Biracial Asian Americans and Mental Health - "34 percent of biracial individuals in a national survey had been diagnosed with a psychological disorder, such as anxiety, depression or substance abuse, versus 17 percent of monoracial individuals. The higher rate held up even after the researchers controlled for differences between the groups in age, gender and life stress, among other factors."
This might be due to an obsession with identity politics, since mixed race people don't fit anywhere
Why Don’t the Japanese Give Priority to the Elderly on Public Transportation? | Japan Info - "I asked my neighbor – (an elderly lady who is also my landlord) about what I saw when I used public transportation and she explained that whenever she get on the bus and someone offers her a seat, she would come up with the thought: “Ah~ Am I becoming so old that I need a young man to give me priority?” This would remind her, “You’re getting old!” Also, she was sure that there are many other people in the same situation. I myself once suffered the same awkwardness when I offered my seat to a woman and her children in the bus, but the result was, no matter how much she kept saying thank you to me, she resisted sitting on that seat. Recently, a Japanese friend just told me: “Even if you have the good will of offering your seat, it doesn’t mean other people have to accept that kindness of yours”. There are some people who are afraid they will cause you “inconvenience or trouble” or simply “don’t want to receive your pity”. As a matter of fact, because Japan is a country which has a growing population of the elderly, their perspective on giving priority to “elderly” somehow different from most other Asia countries"
This is why I don't ride public transportation - 9GAG
Why we do not sleep around all that much any more - "in agricultural societies the populations rapidly expanded, so an infection in a polygynous group would quickly spread and become endemic. A critical mass of people would ensure STIs stay around... Land became increasingly scarce in agricultural societies. Splitting it up among numerous heirs would reduce its value. Social monogamy provided a solution, as only true heirs would inherit their parents' estate."
Bike lock developed that makes thieves immediately vomit - "A thief could also simply return to the spent lock, though Idzkowski insisted this would not be easy, because the noxious spray clings to skin and clothing. “You’re basically just puking on yourself the entire time,” he said. “They could change all their clothes, shower, if the bike is still there come out and cut the remaining 75% of the lock. You can’t prevent a theft 100%, so that’s why we call it a deterrent lock, not a solution. “All you have to do is be better than the bike across the street.”"
"Don't tell me to lock my bicycle, tell bicycle thieves not to steal them"
According to feminists, rape prevention tips just mean the would-be rapist will just rape someone else
Innocent man burned to death by vigilante neighbours who mistook him for paedophile - "Bijan Ebrahimi, a keen gardener, had taken photographs of youths vandalising his hanging baskets and intended to hand them to police as evidence. But someone saw him with the camera and told police that the 44-year-old, who was registered disabled and unable to work, had taken pictures of children. Police went to his flat. As officers took Mr Ebrahimi away for questioning, other residents on his estate gathered in the street and chanted, ‘Paedo, paedo’... James, 24, beat Mr Ebrahimi unconscious and then with the help of another neighbour, Stephen Norley, dragged Mr Ebrahimi into the street, doused him in white spirit and set him on fire."
When you have a moral panic about "protecting children"...
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