Links - 5th September 2012

"Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control." - Don Marquis

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Heteronormative Biases And Hermeneutic Phenomenology In Mass Effect 3 - "Basically I want to address the video game Mass Effect 3 and its scripting of heteronormativity, including heteronormative biases and hermeneutic phenomenology and I will use Butler's performativity and Foucault's concept of power/discourse to show how hegemonically masculine stereotypes could be creating a generation of 'virtual skinheads' and the critical role pedagogy can play. Okay, this isn't about that at all. I mean, it could be, someone in the humanities somewhere followed along with those opening paragraphs and felt like something real was in there, but mostly this article got written because I was bored and wanted to play a video game, so I started one over and decided this time I would play a girl"

Write Your Own Academic Sentence - "The emergence of praxis clarifies the position of the invention of print culture."
Humanities and social sciences != academic

Can A Man Really Get Pregnant? Sure, But It Might Kill Him

Want To Get Pregnant? Eat Ice Cream - "Researchers in the United States have found a link between a low-fat dairy diet and increased risk of infertility due to lack of ovulation (anovulatory infertility)"

Different HIV Rates Among Homosexuals And Heterosexuals Ignores Risky Behavior Data - "to end the HIV epidemic, gay men would need to have rates of unprotected sex several times lower than those currently evident among the straight population. This is because transmission rates are higher for anal sex than they are for vaginal sex, say the authors. But "role versatility," whereby people adopt both “insertive” and “receptive roles,” also plays a part, they add. A gay man can be easily infected through unprotected receptive sex, and then infect someone else through insertive sex. Gay men are therefore far more susceptible to the spread of the virus through the population, even with the same numbers of unprotected sexual partners"

Video Games And Violence: Are Studies Biased? - "Writing today in the International Journal of Liability and Scientific Enquiry, Patrick Kierkegaard of the University of Essex, England, suggests that there is scant scientific evidence that video games are anything but harmless and do not lead to real world aggression. Moreover, his research shows that previous work is biased towards the opposite conclusion... "With millions of sales of violent games, the world should be seeing an epidemic of violence," he says, "Instead, violence has declined." Research is inconclusive, emphasises Kierkegaard. It is possible that certain types of video game could affect emotions, views, behaviour, and attitudes, however, so can books, which can lead to violent behaviour on those already predisposed to violence"

Are All Women Essentially Prostitutes? - "the average client of a $300/hour hooker (which was exactly what I charged) wants a good, quality "girlfriend experience" (GFE), which will be much more likely if he treats his "date" like a lady.  Most escorts who are treated as though they're "bought and paid for" will try to complete the act as quickly as possible and get such a client out the door.  Furthermore, in my experience, the typical client enjoys the illusion that a beautiful woman wants to spend time with him, even if he intellectually knows she is there for the money.  I guarantee you that the majority of my clients tried their utmost to impress me, even to the point of bringing me gifts, flowers, and the like... Intelligent men are less likely to believe in silly propaganda against us, and less likely to have the kind of fragile masculine ego which would be wounded by "having to pay for it." The intelligent man knows that "free tail is the most expensive kind," and can make the reasonable and pragmatic decision to spend his money on a "sure thing" rather than chasing women whose price and quality are uncertain"

Female mate choice is influenced by male sport participation - "We predicted that females would favor males that participated in team sports over individual sports and non-athletes because team sport athletes may be more likely to display qualities such as the ability to work well with others and role acceptance. We used a questionnaire, a photograph, and manipulated descriptions to gauge the effects of sport involvement, attractiveness, and status on 282 females’ willingness to participate in various types of relationships. Team sport athletes were perceived as being more desirable as potential mates than individual sport athletes and non-athletes. It is suggested that team sport athletes may have traits associated with good parenting such as cooperation, likeability, and role acceptance, and/or these athletes may be better able to assert dominance in a team setting"

DesignPorn | Toast messenger by Sasha Tseng - "Eat your words! This toaster by Sasha Tseng incorporates a little message board where one can write quick notes. The message also gets “toasted” into the toast itself."

Nightclubs' foreign entertainer quota cut - "The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said in a circular sent to nightclub operators a week ago that the new limit is in line with the Government's efforts "to regulate the increasing dependency on foreign manpower""
Comment: "If this is MOM trying to show us that they are doing something about FT and FW in Singapore, then I think our MOM is hitting the wrong tree.
Foreign Entertainers do add real variety and value to this industry and do not compete with locals. Each entertainment gig has their own appeal and value and do not compete on cheap pay, unlike in the other industries.
And Singaporean entertainers in general are really quite BORING!"

Bizarre HR: Candidates without Facebook “suspicious” - "Human resources professionals are becoming increasingly wary of candidates who aren’t on Facebook, because it makes them look 'abnormal'... The biggest concern from employers is that a lack of a Facebook page – or other social networking sites – could mean the applicant’s online account contains so much inappropriate content that it had to be deleted. While there could be many reasons a person does not have or want a Facebook page – whether it’s too addictive or they crave privacy – owning one is a sign of having a healthy social network

True & Co: This Startup Has The Secret To Finding The Perfect Bra - "When you sign up, you take a quiz to answer questions like what shape your breast is"

Why Narcissists Ace Job Interviews - "Employers should keep this study in mind: although narcissists dazzled in the interviews, there is no evidence they were more or less effective workers."

Lexington: The scarcer sex | The Economist - " Even now, fewer than two out of ten members of Congress are female. For this, women have only themselves to blame. Plenty of research shows that women who stand for election do just as well as their male counterparts: they raise as much money, scoop up as many votes and are no less likely to win. The problem, according to a recent study and survey by Jennifer Lawless of American University and Richard Fox of Loyola Marymount University, is that so few choose to run. Even though a record number are running for the Senate, women are competing in fewer than a third of congressional races this year. In short, what women mainly lack is political ambition. Perversely, a decade of high-profile role models has done nothing to make a political career more alluring. If anything, the experiences of the likes of Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin and the former House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, appear to have produced the opposite effect"

Consensual sex can lead injuries, rape: study - "The study, in which the researchers compared rape victims with nursing students to come to their conclusion, casts doubt on commonly held view that vaginal injuries are evidence that intercourse has been forced. "The findings are extremely interesting. The nursing students experience just as frequent vaginal injuries as rape victims, and so these injuries cannot be used for much more than to establish that intercourse has taken place"... n cases of convictions based on evidence of vaginal injuries, there could now be discussions as to whether there have been miscarriages of justice... The nursing students' results were not affected by whether they had engaged in rough or gentle sex, or whether they had used condoms or sex toys"

‘Theft’ Law in the 21st Century - NYTimes.com - "From its earliest days, the crime of theft has been understood to involve the misappropriation of things real and tangible... The problem is that most people simply don’t buy the claim that illegally downloading a song or video from the Internet really is like stealing a car. According to a range of empirical studies, including one conducted by me and my social psychologist collaborator, Matthew Kugler, lay observers draw a sharp moral distinction between file sharing and genuine theft, even when the value of the property is the same... criminal law is least effective — and least legitimate — when it is at odds with widely held moral intuitions... We would do better to consider a range of legal concepts that fit the problem more appropriately: concepts like unauthorized use, trespass, conversion and misappropriation"

Indonesian Syariah stronghold 'rehabilitates' punks - ""Why did they arrest us? They haven't given us any reason," said Fauzal, 20. "We didn't steal anything, we weren't bothering anyone. It's our right to go to a concert." A 22-year-old man from Medan city, who did not want to be named, said he feared he would lose his job for staying at the camp for 10 days. "I've just started with a bank in Medan. I don't even know what to tell them because I don't know why I've been arrested." Police said the objective was to deter the youths from "deviant" behaviour. " "They never showered, they lived on the street, never performed religious prayers," Aceh police chief Iskandar Hasan told AFP. "We need to fix them so that they will behave properly and morally. They need harsh treatment to change their mental behaviour"... Aceh, on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island, adopted partial syariah law in 2001 as part of a special autonomy package aimed at quelling separatist sentiment. Only Muslims can be charged under Syariah law, although the non-Muslim community is expected to follow some laws out of respect."

U.S. scholar inspires president to end conscription - "Zue told him that Taiwan's compulsory military service makes college graduates forget what they learned in school and keeps them out of touch with the latest technological advances in their disciplines"

Teachers Don’t Like Creative Students - "'creative people tend to have traits that some have referred to as obnoxious (Torrance, 1963). Torrance (1963) described creative people as not having the time to be courteous, as refusing to take no for an answer, and as being negativistic and critical of others'... although teachers say that they like creative students, teachers also say creative students are “sincere, responsible, good-natured and reliable.” In other words, the teachers don’t know what creative students are actually like"