Links - 24th December 2019 (2)

Rich nations like Singapore should not use 'developing country' status to gain WTO special treatment: Trump - "President Donald Trump on Friday (Jul 26) threatened to withdraw recognition of the special “developing country” status of relatively rich countries – including Singapore and China – at the World Trade Organization unless changes are made to the body’s rules... seven of the 10 wealthiest economies in the world claim developing country status.“Seven out of the 10 wealthiest economies in the world as measured by Gross Domestic Product per capita on a purchasing-power parity basis – Brunei, Hong Kong, Kuwait, Macao, Qatar, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates – currently claim developing-country status,” it said.“Mexico, South Korea, and Turkey – members of both the G20 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – also claim this status"... “When the wealthiest economies claim developing country status, they harm not only other developed economies but also economies that truly require special and differential treatment,” the statement said, and that “cannot continue to go unchecked.”"

Jurors acquitted Mateen Cleaves, prosecutors say this video proved his guilt - "Video from the night Mateen Cleaves was accused of sexual assault shows his accuser struggling and pulling away from the ex-MSU star as he attempts to pull her back into a motel room. Cleaves was acquitted of 4 sexual assault charges by a jury... The first clip shows Cleaves’ accuser walking away from the motel partially nude, followed closely by Cleaves in pursuit. Cleaves is seen wearing only socks.The video shows Cleaves grab the woman, who we are not identifying, spin her around and pull her back towards the room she just tried to leave. She resists, bending her knees and trying to pull away... Colleen Dowdall, a resident of the Knights Inn Motel on September 15, said she witnessed the struggle and testified during Cleaves’ criminal trial.“She looked at me and she said: ‘Help me, help me, help me.’ And I had the phone in my hand and I told her I’m on the phone right now calling the police,” she said. “I looked Mateen in the eyes, he didn’t say one word." 13 minutes later, Cleaves accuser is seen on video again, this time running from the former MSU star who can be seen chasing her, then grabbing her with both arms and pulling her back to the room again.The struggle continues until she ultimately falls to the ground. Seconds later, she is seen trying to pull away again. Once more, Cleaves pulls her back, wrapping both arms around her waist and pulling her back to the room... Cleaves’ attorneys maintained during trial that the sex was always consensual and that the video showed him Cleaves trying to protect the partially nude woman when he pulled her back into the room.Jurors ultimately sided with the former MSU star, deliberating for less than 3 hours before acquitting him of all charges."
Since the alleged victim was white and the alleged perpetrator is black, no one is playing the race card

Birmingham ISIS fighter who 'beheaded more than 100 while claiming £10k benefits' is captured - "while in Syria, Haddouchi reportedly managed to claim thousands of pounds in housing and council tax benefit from Birmingham City Council."

Austria: Muslim Taxi Drivers Refuse to Transport Guide Dogs For the Blind - "Taxi operators Anton Eberl and Harald Flecker apologized for the incident but stressed that they only mediate calls and do not own the taxis.“We try to make it clear to the drivers again and again that this is not the case for us and that these trips have to be carried out exactly like any other job. Unfortunately, at the moment we are not in a position to solve this problem satisfactorily, ” said Flecker, adding that drivers had to be told “again and again” about the rules.According to the Tiroler Tageszeitung newspaper, “80 percent of drivers now have a migrant background – and Muslims traditionally often regard dogs as “impure”... Local laws state the drivers must accept guide dogs for the blind, although many of them simply seem to be ignoring this mandate."

Font of all knowledge? Researchers develop typeface they say can boost memory - "Australian researchers say they have developed a new tool that could help students cramming for exams – a font that helps the reader remember information.Melbourne-based RMIT University’s behavioural business lab and design school teamed up to create “Sans Forgetica”, which they say uses psychological and design theories to aid memory retention.About 400 university students have been involved in a study that found a small increase in the amount participants remembered – 57% of text written in Sans Forgetica compared with 50% in a plain Arial. Typography lecturer Stephen Banham said the font had an unusual seven-degree back slant to the left and gaps in each letter. "The mind will naturally seek to complete those shapes and so by doing that it slows the reading and triggers memory,” Banham told the Guardian.Senior marketing lecturer Janneke Blijlevens said the concept of “desirable difficulty” underpinned the font’s design."

SPIEGEL Interview with John Cleese - " SPIEGEL: Your third divorce, from an American psychologist, cost you a fortune.
Cleese: I was comfortably well off before I got divorced from Alyce Faye Eichelberger. I never knew how much I really had -- I was just comfortable. But now I've been working for seven years to pay off the alimony. She's far better off than I am. So you could sit around being bitter about that. Or you can just think it's completely ridiculous.
SPIEGEL: It seems to be rather serious: You went on an "Alimony Tour," as you called it, to raise money to pay your ex-wife.
Cleese: Yes. In July I will make the last payment and then I will have given her $20 million.
SPIEGEL: $20 Million?
Cleese: Indeed. When we broke up, there were five properties. Now I have one very nice flat left in London, just around the corner. I don't need anything else. It's amazing how important money is today...
 SPIEGEL: These days Muslims and Islam are risky subjects. Do you think they are good issues for satire?
Cleese: For sure. In 1982, Graham Chapman and I wrote a number of scenes for "The Meaning of Life" movie which had an ayatollah in them. This ayatollah was raging against all the evil inventions of the West, you know, like toilet paper. These scenes were never included in the film, although I thought they were much better than many other scenes that were included. And that's why I didn't do any more Python films: I didn't want to be outvoted any longer...
 SPIEGEL: As you put it some time ago: Of course you can make fun of Muslims.
Cleese: They'll just kill you afterwards, yes. To be serious about it though: I think that if people, in particular Muslims, who have a completely different value system, come to the West, then they should accept that there are certain basic values in the West intrinsic to our culture. Just as I wouldn't suggest that any Westerner walk down the streets of Saudi Arabia in a bikini. Respect the local culture. And there are of course lots of kind and utterly decent, admirable Muslims and there are the other lot... Satire makes people think.
 SPIEGEL: In other words: Satire can change the world?
Cleese: When I was young, I felt that if you made fun of a certain kind of behavior, people would realize it was ridiculous. And then it would slowly disappear. It didn't. Of course not. The comedian Peter Cook made that funny joke about these wonderful Berlin cabarets in the 1930s that did so much to hold back Adolf Hitler. Well, you know what happened...
 SPIEGEL: It is remarkable, after all. Your relationship with Germany started in Weston-super-Mare during World War II, when German planes were bombing your seaside home town.
Cleese: Why did they do it? It was a waste of bombs, strange for such an efficient country. I like my father's explanation. He said that they did it to prove that Germans do have a sense of humor after all."
A man isn't a financial plan. But a divorce can be

A survey found that lesbians give women way more orgasms than men. Wonder why?
Naturally this and other media articles were framed so as to blame men. But the actual paper had a much more complicated message and findings

Differences in Orgasm Frequency Among Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Heterosexual Men and Women in a U.S. National Sample - "Heterosexual men were most likely to say they usually-always orgasmed when sexually intimate (95%), followed by gay men (89%), bisexual men (88%), lesbian women (86%), bisexual women (66%), and heterosexual women (65%). Compared to women who orgasmed less frequently, women who orgasmed more frequently were more likely to: receive more oral sex, have longer duration of last sex, be more satisfied with their relationship, ask for what they want in bed, praise their partner for something they did in bed, call/email to tease about doing something sexual, wear sexy lingerie, try new sexual positions, anal stimulation, act out fantasies, incorporate sexy talk, and express love during sex. Women were more likely to orgasm if their last sexual encounter included deep kissing, manual genital stimulation, and/or oral sex in addition to vaginal intercourse... One proximate biological explanation consistent with thebyproduct hypothesis has been offered to explain women’s substantial variation in orgasm rates. The distance between the clitoris and the urinary meatus (clitoris–urinary–meatus–distance; CUMD) places the clitoris farther from the vaginal opening for some women than others(Wallen & Lloyd 2011).Women with longer CUMDs do not reliably have orgasms with intercourse, whereas women with shorter CUMDs (2.0cm or less) have more reliable orgasms. These findings are consistent with the view that a woman’s likelihood of orgasm arises from hormonal mechanisms that direct the development of the penis (and therefore clitoris) in the fetus and infant, rather than female orgasm providing an adaptive benefit for reproduction... If men desire sex more frequently than women (Lippa, 2007), then there could be more sexual encounters in heterosexual relationships explicitly intended to satisfy the desires of the male partner. As a result, higher rates of orgasm in heterosexual men reflect, in part, couples creating equality in their sexual relationships by engaging in activities designed to satiate the partner experiencing intense sexual desire,rather than having a tit-for-tat expectation for orgasm"
Of course, this only surveyed people who had been intimate in the past month. Given that "A famous study conducted in 1983 by Pepper Schwartz and Philip Blumstein of the University of Washington found that only a third of lesbians in relationships of 2 years or longer had sex once a week or more frequently. Almost half of these lesbian couples (47%) had sex once a month or less", this indicates that the claim that "lesbians give women way more orgasms than men" is a victim of selection bias. Indeed, the fact that bisexual and heterosexual women had almost identical orgasm frequencies suggests that this explanation holds water. Indeed, the authors themselves note that straight women have more sex than lesbian women
In addition, this asks "During the past month, how often did you/your partner reach orgasm when you and he or she were intimate?". So if I were sexually intimate 10 times and had 5 orgasms, this study would've reported me as having a lower orgasm frequency than someone who was sexually intimate only once but orgasmed then.
Also, "men reported more frequent orgasms than lesbian women".

Women’s Orgasm and Sexual Satisfaction in Committed Sex and Casual Sex: Relationship Between Sociosexuality and Sexual Outcomes in Different Sexual Contexts - "women report more orgasm and sexual satisfaction from sex in committed relationships than from casual sex... In the present study, we investigated both orgasmic function (e.g., orgasm frequency) and sexual satisfaction because the relationship between orgasmic function and sexual satisfaction in women remains unclear. Some studies of women found that orgasm frequency was positively related to sexual satisfaction (Frederick, Lever, Gillespie, & Garcia, 2017; Klapilova, Brody, Krejéova, Husarova, & Binter, 2015; Kontula & Miettinen, 2016; Young, Denny, Luquis, & Young, 1998), whereas others showed orgasm was unnecessary for sexual satisfaction or pleasure (Bancroft, Long, & McCabe, 2011; Salisbury & Fisher, 2014; Waterman & Chiauzzi, 1982). Because orgasmic function and sexual satisfaction are positively, but not perfectly, correlated in women, and because some women experience sexual satisfaction without orgasm (or vice versa), we examined both physical and psychological sexual outcomes (i.e., orgasmic function and sexual satisfaction). Further, because we sought a richer understanding of women’s orgasmic experience, we assessed orgasm dif‌iiculty, satisfaction with ability to orgasm, and conf‌idence in ability to orgasm, in addition to orgasm frequency... Although all sexual orientations were included in recruitment, preliminary results showed no significant relation-ships between sexual orientation and orgasmic function orsexual satisfaction. Moreover, the results remained the same when controlling for sexual orientation"
This contradicts the study reporting that lesbians get more orgasms than straight women - but then that study is misinterpreted in the first place
Interestingly, even among sexually libertine women, orgasmic function and sexual satisfaction were the same in both casual and committed relationships - even such women didn't *prefer* casual sex. Furthermore, sexually libertine women had lower orgasmic function (higher P value) and sexual satisfaction than sexually conservative women in committed relationships; i.e. to maximise sexual wellness, it seems women should be sexually conservative and in committed relationships. The fact that we see a dose response effect is very suggestive

Americans Greatly Overestimate Percent Gay, Lesbian in U.S. - "The American public estimates on average that 23% of Americans are gay or lesbian... These estimates are many times higher than the 3.8% of the adult population who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender in Gallup Daily tracking in the first four months of this year... Part of the explanation for the inaccurate estimates of the gay and lesbian population rests with Americans' general unfamiliarity with numbers and demography. Previous research has shown that Americans estimate that a third of the U.S. population is black, and believe almost three in 10 are Hispanic, more than twice what the actual percentages were as measured by the census at the time of the research. Americans with the highest levels of education make the lowest estimates of the gay and lesbian population, underscoring the assumption that part of the reason for the overestimate is a lack of exposure to demographic data. Still, the average estimate among those with postgraduate education is 15%, four times the actual rate. Younger Americans give higher estimates than those who are older, and women make significantly higher guesses of the gay and lesbian population than men do... The overestimation may also reflect prominent media portrayals of gay characters on television and in movies, even as far back as 2002, and perhaps the high visibility of activists who have pushed gay causes, particularly legalizing same-sex marriage. Still, the estimates of gay and lesbian percentages have been relatively stable compared with those measured in 2011 and 2002, even though attitudes about gays and lesbians have changed dramatically over that time."