Links - 21st September 2016

What Science Says--and Doesn't--about Spanking - "Ferguson did try to control for the effects of preexisting child behavior in a 2013 meta-analysis he published of the longitudinal studies on this issue; when he did, “spanking’s effects became trivial,” he says. As a further demonstration of the importance of careful statistical controls, Robert Larzelere, a psychologist at Oklahoma State University, and his colleagues reported in a 2010 study that grounding and psychotherapy are linked just as strongly to bad behavior as spanking is but that all the associations disappear with the use of careful statistical controls. It makes sense that disciplinary tactics used as responses to bad behavior will be associated with such behavior, Larzelere says, unless care is taken to control for children’s preexisting characteristics and temperaments."

Ana Kasparian's Disgraceful Fat Shaming Hypocrisy - "Young Turks host champions body positivity while angrily calling Alex Jones a "fat fuck... Just like how leftists will whine all day long about Donald Trump’s supposed sexism and racism – while themselves engaging in rampant misogyny and bigotry against Melania Trump for being a “dumb bitch” who can’t speak English properly – Kasparian was perfectly content to abandon her body positivity message to attack Jones over his weight."

A Cute Internet Star Flirts. All He Wants Is Your Password. - The New York Times - "#HackedByJohnson is the ultimate submission: He’s inside her account, posting as her. This new wave of fan interaction nods to the importance of online security, then asks fans to break the rules. Mr. Johnson accompanied his call for passwords with the disclaimer, “only me tho, don’t ever give out ur passwords to strangers.”"

From Deviance to Normalcy: Women as Sexual Aggressors - "Larimer, Lydum, Anderson, and Turner (1999), reported that rates for their measures of receiving (men = 21%, women = 28%) or instigating (men = 10%, women = 5%) sexual coercion were not statistically different for college men and women, but that women were less likely to use physical force as a tactic to obtain sexual contact (men = 5%, women = 1%)... Anderson (1998, 1996), presented self-reported prevalence rates for women's sexual coercion of between 25% and 40% and for physically forced sexual contact between 1.6% and 7.1%. Of perhaps greater significance was the women's self-reports of engaging in a classic date-rape scenario - taking advantage of someone who was under the influence of alcohol or drugs. When asked about initiating sexual contact with a man when his judgment was impaired by drugs or alcohol, between 32% and 51% of the women said that they had. Further, between 5% and 15% of women reported giving a man alcohol or drugs in an attempt to have sexual contact with him... the use of pressure tactics or force by a woman could be seen as a method of foreplay and not aggression... coercers could be distinguished from other college women in that they were more likely; 1) to view traditional women's roles as being constricting, 2) to believe that forcing sex at times is acceptable, 3) to acknowledge that it is acceptable for women to have and act on sexual thoughts and desires, and 4) to admit their lust and desire for power in sexual encounters... Anderson and Aymani (1993) stated that males reported being recipients of female aggression more than females admitted to being aggressors... men reported significantly more events of adult women initiating sexual contact with them while they were minors (OR=10.9), by getting them drunk or high (OR=3.7), and by threatening to end their relationship (OR=6.3) than women reported... women from the South reported less overall aggression (34.1% vs. 46.2%), sexual abuse (7.3% vs. 21.1%), and physically forced sex (1.6% vs. 7.1%) but not less sexual coercion (all differences were significant at p < .001) Most of the coercers' views sound like feminists'; since the South presumably has more traditional gender roles, this suggests that traditional gender roles aren't all bad

From Gay World to Pop Yeh Yeh: When Geylang rocked the ‘60s - Channel NewsAsia - "By most accounts, Pop Yeh Yeh eventually fizzled out in 1971. But it wasn’t the only music movement that had to adjust to the changes in that decade. The Government had increasingly been casting a critical eye on afternoon tea dances, at which youths were rockin’ and rollin’ across the island, due to gangster-related violence and drugs. And in 1972, there was a stabbing incident at the Boiler Room nightclub at Mandarin Hotel, which led to the authorities imposing a total ban on live music in clubs, said Mr Pereira. “Gangsterism, the increasing drug addiction problem — it was all associated with the nightlife scene. (The ban) lasted for about five years, and by the time it was lifted, it was a bit late. The live music scene had totally weakened. A lot of the working bands went elsewhere, where they could find work, or stopped playing completely,” he said."
So the government dealt a fatal blow to the local music scene. No surprises there

Here’s how the internet reacted after the Normandy church attack - "Some highlighted how this puts many of France’s Muslims at risk for discrimination.
The real victims of #Normandy are France's Muslims, who are at greater risk of Islamophobia than ever before!
— Dr. H. Heretic, PhD (@hateful_heretic) July 26, 2016
And, of course, others advised caution.
Another day, another terrorist attack committed by Muslims. But these attacks have got *nothing* to do with Islam. #Normandy #Normandie
— (((Jim Bryant))) (@jamesbryantrec) July 26, 2016
Let's not jump to conclusions. We know nothing about the background or beliefs of the trucks responsible for workplace violence in #Normandy
— Allum Bokhari (@LibertarianBlue) July 26, 2016"
Some people don't understand irony (or this is Poe's Law)

Bill Clinton’s front page photos on Hillary's nomination are about news constraints not sexism. - "There are a few interpretations of the popular editorial choice to illustrate the story of Hillary Clinton’s momentous achievement with a photo of Bill. One is that papers were trying to get at both of the evening’s major events: Hillary’s nomination and Bill’s speech. Another is that there simply were no photos of Hillary from Tuesday night; she only appeared in a video near the end of the proceedings and won’t speak live at the convention until Thursday. Or, as some suggested on Twitter Wednesday morning, it’s straight-up misogyny... Some outlets used a photo of Hillary speaking on the video screen, an unpleasant image with whiffs of Orwell. An argument could be made that those pictures reek of sexism as well, since it plays into the Republican caricature of Hillary as a heartless megalomaniac with ambitions of world domination."

Leibel A. Mangel - "A Palestinian man yells at IDF soldiers, demanding they kill his child so it can be captured on video. The soldier instead shakes the young child's hand. The father then tells his child to throw rocks at the soldiers.. "There will be peace when they LOVE their children more than they HATE ours"

On Becoming Anti-Bernie - "Sanders was less interested in actually accomplishing anything than he was in staging protests where he could claim some kind of moral high ground, not interested in getting in the weeds and doing anything to actually achieve his goals within the Congress he worked in. This research put Sanders’ supposedly pristine progressive agenda in perspective: it is very easy to maintain that agenda if you never make the hard choices necessary to get things done. Classic protester — yet handily collecting his $200,000 pay check and his lifetime of benefits while doing little to enact actual progressive policies to improve people’s lives. I did more research than the above, but the two overarching themes I just described (magical thinking and ideological purity over practicality) seem tied together in terms of what Sanders has to offer the country with respect to governance... the Sanders campaign has also awakened a dormant left-wing Tea Party that I didn’t believe existed, but that lives in a fever swamp of conspiracy-thinking and epistemic closure and rejection of fact and binary, “us v. them” thinking. And that terrifies me"

Could Pokemon Go save the economy? - "Sokcho has capitalized on the gold rush, as tour buses now carry Pokemon pilgrims several hours to Sokcho. They're not there for the beaches or the boating. They're there to play Pokemon Go... Pokemon Go's developers used a grid to block the country, but geometric shapes cannot perfectly cover the natural contours of coastline. The result is a small area in South Korea where people can play Pokemon Go"

Frequent password changes are the enemy of security, FTC technologist says - "Over the past few years, organizations including the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the US and UK government agency CESG have also concluded that mandated password changes are often ineffective or counterproductive"

Six Reasons ISIS Hates The West, According To Report - "“The fact is, even if you were to stop bombing us, imprisoning us, torturing us, vilifying us, and usurping our lands, we would continue to hate you because our primary reason for hating you will not cease to exist until you embrace Islam”. Though the Mirror breaks the ISIS diatribe against the West down to six simple points, it actually goes into far greater specifics such as bashing western thinkers like Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, and Karl Marx, ranting against coffee drinkers, and criticizing western women, whom they argue should be docile and submissive according to the Sunday Express. Independent western women, according to the ISIS article “work like man, rule like man, and have intercourse like an animal, without being conscious of her Lord watching both her and her heinous partner in crime.”"
ISIS admits that it really does hate our freedoms and admits that Western foreign policy is not their primary motivator. Not that this will convince liberals

Medical benefits of flossing unproven

Chinese-American woman crowned Miss Michigan, netizens think she's ugly: Shanghaiist - ""She's ugly AND she isn't Chinese," @y块木头 wrote.
"Is this competition for picking the ugliest person?" @乄冰糖 wrote.
"She's 23?! Why does she look like she's 43?" @Joan516 wrote.
"She's ruining the reputation of Chinese people," @小花仙002 wrote.
"This is probably the American standard of beauty. She looks exactly like Mulan in Disney," @久未闻君 wrote."

Portland Doughnut Shop Attacked by Vegans for Discrimination - "As a small, locally owned business we feel that voluntary lifestyle, non-medical, and non-religious dietary restrictions could seriously compromise our ability to make crucial decisions to assure food quality and safety. It's not discrimination, it's common sense"
Actually why should medical/religious reasons exempt you from having to be able to do your job?

Drinking three cups of coffee a day 'shrinks women's breasts' - "there was a clear link between drinking coffee and smaller breasts as around half of all women possess a gene that has been shown to link breast size to coffee intake."

Singaporean man with breast implants removes them - "He was so desperate to remove his C-cup breast implants that he worked two jobs and slept just three hours a night to raise the $7,000 needed for the procedure. In April 2013, Mr Kurt Tay, then a 27-year-old security guard, made headlines when he got breast implants because he needed to "boost his confidence". At the time, he said that after a string of failed attempts to date women, he wanted the breasts "to feel better". Mr Tay also claimed then that he was not a transsexual. Eight months after getting his implants, he married Madam Kim Ngan, a 29-year-old Vietnamese national... Back in 2013, he had said: "Whenever I saw women on the train, I'd feel very miserable that I didn't have breasts like them. "It was like suddenly all I wanted was to have breasts. Until today, I can't explain what came over me. "I was depressed after losing money at the casino and my online escort business failed"... He now aspires to be a World Wrestling Entertainment star."

'Star Wars': Rey's Instant Bread Wasn't CGI -- It Was Totally Real

Composers' Datebook for Tuesday, August 2 - "Over the centuries, at least 65 operas have been written on the theme of Orpheus and Eurydice. In fact, two of the very first operas every written concern this mythological tale— one was by Jacopo Peri performed in 1600 and another by Claudio Monteverdi from 1607."

Apple is replacing the pistol emoji with a squirt gun

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Euclid's Elements - "This is part of, something that people may not appreciate it: mathematics actually works on the emotions. You're telling a story. Euclid's Elements is full of story-telling. It's taking people from things, a place where they kind of understand and are happy, to a new place. And this for me is the transformative moment. I think this is worthy of being compared with the Iliad and the Odyssey. This is journeys that are being made, but in the mind of the reader and the listener, to anyone reading these proofs... Euclid had a student who said to him: what's the point of all this? How am I going to profit from this? Euclid said to his servant: give this student a coin. Now you have profited from this and let's move on... This is mathematics for its own sake. It is useful but I think in the Elements you're seeing the joy of understanding and proving universal truths"