Links - 8th May 2019 (2)

Santa Claus banned from Ho Ho Ho - ""The reason behind that is we find that in some cases the little kids can get a little bit scared of the deep 'ho, ho, hos' and we ask them to be mindful of keeping their voices to a lower level," he said. And kids are probably more inclined to understand 'ha, ha, ha', than 'ho, ho, ho'"... A survey of Melbourne children yesterday found universal support for Santa's "ho ho ho"."

No Christ in Christmas next? School 'Jesus ban' sparks fury - "A 'JESUS ban' in public schools has sparked fury from Coast MPs, after reports kids swapping Christmas cards, making Christmas tree decorations or bracelets could be censored. The Australian reported an unofficial policy from the Queensland Department of Education and Training had identified junior evangelism as an issue to be stamped out, following a Departmental review into GodSpace religious instruction materials... Examples of evangelising reported as being in the review and two other previous reviews included exchanging Christmas cards referring to Jesus's birth, making Christmas tree decorations and beaded bracelet gifts in order to share the good news about Jesus"

Big W removes any mention of Christmas from decorations - "Discount department store Big W has removed the word 'Christmas' from boxes and signage in the lead-up to the holiday season... The Big W website still has trees listed under their original names, and spokeswoman told The Herald Sun the chain was proud of its line of trees this year"

Christmas decorations reinstated after Service Tasmania backflip - "Service Tasmania staff were told this week not to recognise Christmas in their offices in any way, and were forced to remove decorations and told not to wear anything festive."

Indigenous woman yells ‘I hate white people’ before punching white woman, but it’s not a hate crime judge rules - "A Calgary indigenous woman who knocked out a Caucasian woman’s tooth while yelling “I hate white people,” didn’t commit a racially motivated crime, a judge says."
Indigenous people don't actually mean what they say, apparently. Infantalisation is okay if it "protects" "minorities"?

Eating meat promotes toxic masculinity, academic journal says - "“[V]egetarians defy attempts to hold them accountable to gendered social expectations,” she wrote. “Women, for example, assert authority over their diets; men embody rejection of the meat-masculinity nexus by adopting a worldview that also rejects sexism and racism.”"
So maybe women should eat more meat to defy stereotypes

Tens of thousands of Islamic activists hold prayers on streets of Bangladesh capital to call for new blasphemy laws

10 Things Every Intersectional Feminist Should Ask On a First Date - Everyday Feminism - "1. Do you believe that Black Lives Matter?
2. What are your thoughts on gender and sexual orientation?
3. How do you work to dismantle sexism and misogyny in your life?
4. What are your thoughts on sex work?
5. Are you a supporter of the BDS movement?
6. What is your understanding of settler colonialism and indigenous rights?
7. Do you think capitalism is exploitative?
8. Can any human be illegal?
9. Do you support Muslim Americans and non-Muslim people from Islamic countries?
10. Does your allyship include disabled folks?"
No true feminist puts sugar in her porridge

Trapped in A Marriage with an Al-Qaeda Operative, Yasmine Fought Back for the Sake of Her Daughter - "At the age of thirteen, I managed to involve social services and begged to be taken out of that home. I told them, and the police, and the judge of how we were severely beaten. I told them of how I was hung up upside down in our garage and how the bottoms of my feet were whipped. They all knew. Yet, after months of deliberating, the judge ruled that different cultures are free to discipline their children in different ways. Because of their cultural norms, my family was excused from torturing me"

2016 FBI data: Jews were 3X more likely than blacks, 1.5X more likely than Muslims to be a hate crime victim - "According to a Google news search for the term “hate crimes” along with the name of each of those three groups, there are 131,000 results for “hate crimes” + black, 69,00 results for “hate crimes” + Muslims and only 32,500 results for “hate crimes” + Jews. Based on news reports, you might think that blacks were four times more likely than Jews to be the victim of a hate crime and that Muslims were almost more than twice as likely to be a hate crime victim compared to Jews. Hate crime data released today by the FBI for 2016 reveal that there were 1,739 African-American victims of hate crimes last year, 684 Jewish victims of anti-religious hate crimes and 307 Muslim hate crime victims. Adjusting for the population size of each group (42.975 million blacks in 2016 according to the Census Bureau and 5.65 million Jews and 3.88 million Muslims based on Pew Research Center data for 2015 and making estimates for 2016 based on Pew projections), the hate crime victimization rates last year per 100,000 population of each group were 12.1 for Jews, 7.9 for Muslims and 4.0 for blacks (see chart above). Therefore, adjusted for population by group, American Jews were about three times more likely than blacks to be a victim of a hate crime last year, and 50% more likely than a Muslim to be a hate crime victim... there were more Jewish victims last year of anti-religious hate crimes (684) than victims of all other religious groups combined (589). The FBI data also show that there were more hate crimes last year against Jews (684) than against gay men (675)."

Hull - Internet Troll Sentenced - "After being charged in June, Daniel Kilvington, 23, of Spring Bank, Hull, has received his sentence. Now, after appearing before the Magistrates court, Daniel has been found guilty of seven offences of sending malicious communications. Each of the offences were committed using social media. The legal term of this offence is to “send by public communication network an offensive/indecent/obscene/menacing/ message/matter”."
Police priorities!

Police apologise for telling theft victim they are 'too busy' to investigate - "Police have apologised to a business owner and victim of theft after he was told authorities were “too busy” to investigate. Jack Whiteley, 69, had handed CCTV footage of thieves taking garden furniture to Essex Police, but was told the police were “unable to assist as they are at saturation point with their workload”."

Education is Related to Greater Ideological Prejudice - "Decades of research have shown that education reduces individuals’ prejudices toward people who belong to different groups, but this research has focused predominantly on prejudice toward ethnic/racial groups, immigrant groups, and general nonconformists. However, it is not clear whether education reduces other prejudices against groups along different dimensions, including ideological identification. An analysis of American National Election Studies data from 1964 to 2012 shows that education is related to decreases in interethnic/interracial prejudice, but also to increases in ideological (liberal vs. conservative) prejudice. This finding could not be explained simply by the greater polarization of the American electorate in the past twenty years"

Greater intrasex phenotype variability in males than in females is a fundamental aspect of the gender differences in humans - "Human studies of intrasex variability have shown that males are intellectually more variable. Here we have performed retrospective statistical analysis of human intrasex variability in several different properties and performances that are unrelated or indirectly related to intelligence: (a) birth weights of nearly 48,000 babies (Medical Birth Registry of Norway); (b) adult weight, height, body mass index and blood parameters of more than 2,700 adults aged 18–90 (NORIP); (c) physical performance in the 60 meter dash event of 575 junior high school students; and (d) psychological performance reflected by the results of more than 222,000 undergraduate university examination grades (LIST). For all characteristics, the data were analyzed using cumulative distribution functions and the resultant intrasex variability for males was compared with that for females. The principal finding is that human intrasex variability is significantly higher in males, and consequently constitutes a fundamental sex difference"
Aka Larry Summers was right

Nature, Nurture, and Invention: analysis of Finnish data - "The authors of the paper below have access to patent, income, education, and military IQ records in Finland. (All males are subject to conscription.) By looking at brothers who are close in age but differ in IQ score, they can estimate the relative importance of common family environment (such as family income level or parental education level, which affect both brothers) versus the IQ difference itself. Their results suggest that cognitive ability has a stronger effect than shared family environment. Again, if one just looks at probability of invention versus family income or SES (see graph), one might mistakenly conclude that family environment is the main cause of increased likelihood of earning a patent later in life. In fact, higher family SES is also correlated to superior genetic endowments which can be passed on to the children... IQ has both a direct effect on the probability of inventing which is almost five times as large as that of having a high-income father, and an indirect effect through education... IQ matters more than all family background variables combined... Finland is generally more egalitarian than the US, both in terms of wealth distribution and access to education. But the probability of invention vs family income graph is qualitatively similar in both countries"
Again, parenting doesn't really matter - the biggest effect parents have on children is their genes

Discordant Sexual Identity in Some Genetic Males with Cloacal Exstrophy Assigned to Female Sex at Birth - "Assessments revealed moderate-to-marked male-typical behaviors in all 16 subjects... All 16 subjects denied ever having had fantasies about weddings... The parents of all 14 subjects assigned to female sex stated that they had reared their child as a female. Twelve of these subjects have sisters: parents described equivalent child-rearing approaches and attitudes toward the subjects and their sisters. However, parents described a moderate-to-pronounced unfolding of male-typical behaviors and attitudes over time in these subjects — but not in their sisters. Parents reported that the subjects typically resisted attempts to encourage play with female-typical toys or with female playmates or to behave as parents thought typical girls might behave. These 14 subjects expressed difficulties fitting in with girls. All but one played primarily or exclusively with male-typical toys. Only one played with dolls; the others did so almost never or never. Only one ever played house. Each of the three exceptions represents a different subject. Parents noted substantial difficulty attempting to dress the subjects — but not their sisters — in clearly feminine attire after about four years of age.
After the John/Joan (David Reimer) case, 16 more examples showing the blank slate is false
Also this shows how gender neutral parenting fails - because even when you explicitly raise the child as the other gender, it doesn't work

Study finds robust sex differences in children's toy preferences across a range of ages and countries - "The studies were conducted in the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel and China. The sex difference in toy preference held even after the researchers accounted for the effects of the presence or absence of an adult, the study setting, the gender equality status of the country, year of publication, and presence of gender‐neutral toys."

Intelligence in early adulthood and subsequent hospitalization for mental disorders. - "Lower intelligence is a risk factor for the whole range of mental disorders and for illness severity"

The power of cognitive ability in explaining educational test performance, relative to other ostensible contenders - "The paper examines the relationship between cognitive ability at thirteen years of age and children's academic performance assessments at aged nine. Alongside cognitive ability, other variables considered predictive of academic success were assessed including personality measures, birthweight, handedness, socio-economic background, parental education, home language, and child-rearing practices such as breast-feeding and access to video-games. The final sample comprised 7525 children who participated in both wave 1 and wave 2 of the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) longitudinal study. Participants in the study were selected through the state school system using a 2-stage sampling method producing a large sample representative of the national population of nine-year-old children. Linear multiple regression identified five variables which significantly explained both reading and mathematics test scores: two cognitive ability measures, birthweight, wealthier households, and high attendance at parent-teacher meetings. Gender, parental education, and home language also made a contribution to reading test scores, while a general factor of personality was significant for mathematics. Overall the cognitive ability measures accounted for almost all of the explained variance, and other factors, while sometimes statistically significant, were of relatively minor importance."
Douglas Heingartner on Twitter: "New study finds that IQ explains almost all the variance in students' academic achievement. Other variables such as socio-economic background, parental education, personality, child-rearing practices or home language hardly play a role at all."

Charts Show The Political Bias Of Each Profession - "Crowdpac, a non-partisan firm dedicated to political data analysis, used federal campaign contribution records dating back to 1980 in order to estimate where various officials and donors fall on the political spectrum. They scored individual donors as being more liberal or conservative based on what kinds of candidates they gave to... People who work in the news media are almost exclusively donors to liberal candidates. Donors in the entertainment industry are similarly liberal. Academics also tend to give to liberal candidates. The tech industry has a decidedly liberal bent as well"
It is noteworthy that even the most conservative professions are much less conservative than the most liberal ones
This suggests that the media has a liberal bias (if receiving some funding from a certain source is enough to taint your findings, surely giving lots of funding to a certain source is a clear signal of bias)

Sperm donor must pay child support to lesbian couple, court rules - "An American man who donated sperm to a lesbian couple is the legal father of their daughter and must pay child support, a court has ruled... They signed a contract agreeing that Mr Marotta would have no financial responsibility for the child. But when the couple encountered financial difficulties, and one of them applied for state benefits, the state of Kansas applied to a court to have Mr Marotta declared the child's father and made responsible for her."
No good deed goes unpunished

Migrant Family Of NYC Terror Suspect TRASH The Police - "Bangladeshi national Akayed Ullah's homemade pipe bomb prematurely detonated when he was at New York City's Port Authority in a failed attempt at a suicide bombing. According to the White House, the failed suicide bomber was allowed entry into the country through so-called "chain migration."... The family reacted to Ullah's attempted terror attack by expressing "outrage" over American police authorities and suggesting institutionalized Islamophobia"

Refugee: Palestinians in Arab countries have it bad, too - The Washington Post - "In a long online Q&A on Reddit, one Palestinian refugee challenges the assumption that Israel is the only country in the region that has either restricted the rights of or discriminated against Palestinians. The situation of Palestinians in Israel's neighbors has been just as bad as many Palestinians say it is in the West Bank, he writes."
Comments: "That could explain why there's only 21 comments so far - nobody cares about Arabs if they are not bashing Israel."
"the U.N. considers an Arab a "Palestinian refugee" if his great-grandfather lived in Israel from 1946 to 1948, having moved there from, say, Egypt, in 1946. Thus, standards for what constitutes a refugee are different for Palestinians than for any other refugees in the history of the world... At this point, there can't be more than a few thousand genuine refugees left from 1948"
"you should equally advocate that millions of Greeks today return to Turkey, millions of Indians today return to Pakistan and Bangladesh, and millions of Germans return to Czech Republic."