Links - 14th August 2018 (1)

Famed impulse control 'marshmallow test' fails in new research - "The new research by Tyler Watts, Greg Duncan and Hoanan Quen, published in Psychological Science, found that there were still benefits for the children who were able to hold out for a larger reward, but the effects were nowhere near as significant as those found by Mischel, and even those largely disappeared at age 15 once family and parental education were accounted for."
Paper: "this bivariate correlation was only half the size of those reported in the original studies and was reduced by two thirds in the presence of controls for family background, early cognitive ability, and the home environment."
This assumes that there is no genetic, intelligence or environmental component to self control

The marshmallow test held up OK - "The replication created categories for time waited (e.g. 0 to 20 seconds, 20 seconds to 2 minutes, and so on), rather than using time as a continuous variable. It also focused on children with parents who did not have a college education – too many of the children with college-educated parents waited the full seven minutes... The original claim was not that the marshmallow test was the best or only predictor... In the replication data, most of the predictive power of the marshmallow test was found to lie in the first 20 seconds. There was not a lot of difference between the kids who waited more than 20 seconds and those that waited the full seven minutes"

phrases - Never Meet Your Heroes - Is this expression an adage?

May takes swipe at business, saying 'this can't go on anymore' - "Today too many people in positions of power behave as though they have more in common with international elites than with the people down the road, the people they employ, the people they pass on the streets"

The Israeli Army Unit That Recruits Teens With Autism - "for the military, it’s an opportunity to harness the unique skill sets that often come with autism: extraordinary capacities for visual thinking and attention to detail, both of which lend themselves well to the highly specialized task of aerial analysis... childhood autism was two to four times more prevalent in the Dutch technology hub of Eindhoven as in other Dutch cities of similar size, support for a possible link between autism and scientific ability. Other people have observed a similar phenomenon in Silicon Valley."

Landmark 100 Percent Renewable Energy Study Flawed, Say 21 Leading Experts - "the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published a scathing critique of Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson’s analysis, which claims a full transition of all sectors of the U.S. energy system to wind, water, and solar power by 2050 is “technically and economically feasible with little downside.”"

Anthony Bourdain says he would poison Trump if given the chance

Genetic influence on family socioeconomic status and children's intelligence - "Environmental measures used widely in the behavioral sciences show nearly as much genetic influence as behavioral measures, a critical finding for interpreting associations between environmental factors and children's development. This research depends on the twin method that compares monozygotic and dizygotic twins, but key aspects of children's environment such as socioeconomic status (SES) cannot be investigated in twin studies because they are the same for children growing up together in a family. Here, using a new technique applied to DNA from 3000 unrelated children, we show significant genetic influence on family SES, and on its association with children's IQ at ages 7 and 12. In addition to demonstrating the ability to investigate genetic influence on between-family environmental measures, our results emphasize the need to consider genetics in research and policy on family SES and its association with children's IQ."

I am against gender-neutral parenting. Here's why - "A couple in the UK raised their child for five years not letting anyone know the gender. According to the couple they wanted the child to decide... Sasha wears a "ruched-sleeved" girl's shirt as part of his school uniform, and has been banned from sporting combat trousers. Why ban him from wanting to wear something that could be perceived as masculine? The youngster is also encouraged to wear flowery tops at weekends. This to me sounds like the parents are influencing which direction this little boy goes. They obviously want a girl... if your child is clueless of what society deems as gender normal behavior, makes a decision out of ignorance and has a hard time being accepted by his/her peers or dealing with the internal battle of where he/she fits in, you as the parent must be ready to accept responsibility. You failed to protect, and educate, your child properly."

Rape is rarely violent and doesn’t merit a jail term, claims Germaine Greer - "Rape is rarely a violent crime and should be punishable by 200 hours of community service, Germaine Greer has suggested, as she poured scorn on the idea that victims are left with post traumatic stress disorder. The feminist said the system must be overhauled because few cases that hinge on consent end in a conviction... Greer was the victim of a rape when she was in her late teens – a violent attack in which she was repeatedly beaten. But she told an audience at the Hay Festival: “Most rapes don’t involve any injury whatsoever. We are told it’s one of the most violent crimes in the world – bull----. Most rape is just lazy, just careless, just insensitive. Every time a man rolls over on his exhausted wife and insists on enjoying his conjugal right, he is raping her. It will never end up in a court of law.” She went on: “Instead of thinking of rape as a spectacularly violent crime – and some rapes are – think about it as non-consensual, that is, bad sex... “the official position now is that 70 per cent of rape victims suffer PTSD and only 20 per cent of veterans”. She added: “At this point you think, what the hell are you saying? That something that leaves no sign, no injury, nothing, is more damaging to women than seeing your best friend blown up by an IED is to a veteran?” She argued that we should stop “pathologising” rape and saying that it destroys women’s lives"
This is one possible endpoint of the endless hysteria of feminists about 'rape'. The other of course being the dominant narrative - doubling down and becoming even more hysterical about ever more minor phenomena
Does this mean she's no longer a feminist?

Legendary Special-Effects Artist Rick Baker on How CGI Killed His Industry - "'When you have a good actor, in a good makeup, and he's been sitting in the makeup chair looking at himself in the mirror, seeing himself become something else, and then he walks onto a set and he knows where he is, he knows what he looks like, he gives a performance that he's never going to give on a motion-capture stage.'"

Kosher bacon attempts to break one of Israel’s greatest taboos - "When the so-called pork law was enacted in 1962, forbidding the raising and slaughtering of pigs, most secular Jews had no objection. Even then-Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion – who had previously admitted to eating pork and who believed the idea of prohibiting the raising of any animal was “absurd” – supported the law in order to appease the religious parties. The reason may be that since the dawn of Jewish history, the pig has always been considered the symbol of impurity. That may explain why even today many secular Israelis, who describe themselves as omnivores, still won't eat pork... “Bacon is a combo of saltiness, fattiness and crispness – and that’s what people are looking for,” he says. “The taste is not the same, but it serves the same function. Many people don’t notice the difference.”... Bulka points to the Talmud as the source for the practice of imitating foods. Yalta, the wife of Babylonian scholar Rav Nachman, said that “Whatever the Merciful one has forbidden us, he has permitted us something of equal worth.” In other words, it’s acceptable to taste forbidden things by eating similar substitutes"

"Taboo, Unclean" Pork Vanishing From Tel Aviv Restaurants - "Tel Aviv was the place to go for pork in the early 20th century, when secular immigrants from Europe were pouring into the country with a taste for the meat and without cultural or religious sensitivities towards it. Even when pork was considered off-limits and abhorrent in other parts of the country, it was easy to find in Tel Aviv. Today, however, things are different. A survey published earlier in the month revealed that a whopping 70.6 percent of Israelis do not eat pig’s meat, findings that are consistent with the first-hand experience of Tel Aviv restaurant owners and chefs."

Safety first: Afghan shoppers go online to avoid bombs, harassment

WhatsApp overtakes Facebook as top ‘fake news’ source: Reach survey - "WhatsApp was the most common source of false information, with half of the respondents saying they came across fake news on the messaging platform. In comparison, 46 per cent cited Facebook."

Transgender Parent Demands Baby Is Made Legally Motherless - "A baby could become the first born in England or Wales to not legally have a mother if a female-to-male transgender activist wins a court battle, historically altering Britain’s definition of a family. The parent, who was born a woman and still retains female biology including the ability to bear children, has “identified” as a man for a few years and wants to begin the process of effectively legally erasing the essential role of biological women in gibing birth... The transgendered man has taken legal action against the body registering births and deaths in the United Kingdom, complaining of discrimination and claiming that being described as a mother after giving birth will violate their “human rights”."

NHS to Offer Biological Men Cervical Cancer Smear to Avoid 'Triggering Gender Dysphoria' - "Biological women who legally define themselves as men will not be routinely scanned for breast and cervical cancer, even if they retain these organs and remain at risk... biological men who regard themselves as women are being invited for cervical smear tests – even though it is impossible for them to have a cervix – an official guidebook states."

Boy, 14, left fighting for life after his intestines were sucked out by swimming pool filter - "A teenager was left fighting for his life after his intestines were sucked out by the filter of a swimming pool. The 14-year-old became trapped in the purifier of his local pool and was unable to free himself because of the force of the suction."
Life imitates art (Chuck Palahniuk)

Plastic Straws Aren’t the Problem - "Straws make up a trifling percentage of the world's plastic products, and campaigns to eliminate them will not only be ineffective, but could distract from far more useful efforts... this well-intentioned campaign assumes that single-use plastics, such as straws and coffee stirrers, have much to do with ocean pollution. And that assumption is based on some highly dubious data. Activists and news media often claim that Americans use 500 million plastic straws per day, for example, which sounds awful. But the source of this figure turns out to be a survey conducted by a nine-year-old. Similarly, two Australian scientists estimate that there are up to 8.3 billion plastic straws scattered on global coastlines. Yet even if all those straws were suddenly washed into the sea, they'd account for about .03 percent of the 8 million metric tons of plastics estimated to enter the oceans in a given year... at least 46 percent of the plastic in the garbage patch by weight comes from a single product: fishing nets. Other fishing gear makes up a good chunk of the rest"

The Closing of the American Mind - "It did not bother Bloom that liberal education was available in practice only to a privileged few. He took for granted that American democracy (or any society, for that matter) would always contain hierarchies of power, knowledge, income and wealth. The question for Bloom was not whether America should or shouldn’t have elites, but rather what kind of elite was most compatible with democratic ideals... He warmly remembered his students of the Fifties, who arrived at college full of firm convictions, but also eager for intellectual exploration that might challenge them. In contrast, students in the late Eighties, having grown up believing that all beliefs and ways of life are equally valid, were “easygoing” and “nice,” but almost completely indifferent to the profoundest aspects of human life. For Bloom, this was apparent in the way they thought about things like romance and culture... Underneath a nonjudgmental relativism, Bloom saw a creeping nihilism: believing that all judgments of value had equal weight, the students ended up not believing or aspiring to much of anything at all. As a result, they no longer aspired to learn the truth, but rather to be “open-minded.” Incapable of treating moral questions and culture as anything other than matters of personal preference, they couldn’t be bothered to take seriously the task of self-reinvention that their education demanded of them. But if liberty had been replaced by indifference, equality in post-sixties America had been hijacked by a form of fanaticism. Radical political movements like feminism and Black Power had introduced an absolutist notion of egalitarianism into everyday discourse. Bloom claimed his students had reverted to what Tocqueville called the “passion for equality,” a rudimentary instinct in democratic societies to insist dogmatically that all individuals are fundamentally the same"

Gender differences in perceptions of emotionality: The case of close heterosexual relationships - "Previous research suggests some support for the stereotype that women are the more emotional gender, but very little research has examined whether women are more emotional than men in the context of close relationships. We examined gender differences in reports of emotions experienced and expressed in close heterosexual relationships. A sample of 197 couples (at different stages of relationship involvement), most of whom were white and from middle-class backgrounds, responded to a list of 25 positive and negative emotions three times. Participants indicated how often they experienced the emotions, how often they expressed the emotions, and how often they believed their partner experienced the emotions (all in the past month). Women reported experiencing several emotions to a greater frequency than men, regardless of degree of relationship involvement. Further, women reported being more emotionally expressive than men in dating and more advanced (e.g., engaged) relationships, but not in marital relationships. Finally, women believed that they were generally more emotional than men, whereas men believed that women were more emotional in the experience of negative but not positive emotions. The results were generally consistent with the stereotype that females are the more emotional gender."
Keywords: Women are more emotional than men

The Economics of Dining as a Couple - "A communist economy is a terrible idea. A communist dinner table, on the other hand, truly is a bounteous paradise. This is the final flowering of the dining experience, when the barriers wither away and all ordering is centrally planned, with the fruits distributed equally. You will know that this happy moment has arrived when you start telling the waiter “Just put the plates anywhere; we share everything.”"

Why sex and love don’t belong in the same bed - "“It’s dreadful and destructive what modern culture would have us believe. By conflating sex and love, we have young people wanting plastic surgery to change their bodies. They think that by having surgery they’ll become more shaggable, and therefore more lovable. Isn’t that pathetic?”... The French are right: you cannot desire what you already have"

Trump at G7: How Photos of the Same Scene Can Tell Different Stories

Indomie-inspired clutch in Indonesia is noodle brand lovers’ wet dream

Kim Jong Un went sightseeing in Singapore the night before Trump summit - The Washington Post - "Singapore’s government appeared to be sending a signal to Kim about the possibilities for his own future, See said. “I would not be surprised that part of the message the U.S. has for North Korea in bringing them here is to say, ‘If you take the right steps tomorrow, this could be the global prosperous city or country you can be in a generation,’ ” he said."

Families In A Maya Village In Mexico May Have The Secret To Getting Kids To Do Chores : Goats and Soda - "Volunteering to help is such an important trait in kids that Mexican families even have a term for it: acomedido... "Toddlers are very eager to be helpful," says David Lancy, an anthropologist at Utah State University, who documented this universality in his new book, Anthropology Perspectives on Children as Helpers, Workers, Artisans, and Laborers. Toddlers are born assistants. Need help sweeping up the kitchen? Rinsing a dish? Or cracking an egg? No worries. Toddlers Inc. will be there on the double. In one study, 20-month-olds actually stopped playing with a new toy and walked across the room to help an adult pick up something from the floor. And they didn't need a reward for their assistance. In fact, the toddlers were less likely to help a second time if they were given a toy afterward, the study found... In many instances, Western moms tell the toddlers to go and play while they do the chores, she says. But moms with indigenous heritage often do the exact opposite... Encourage the messy, incompetent toddler who really wants to do the dishes now, and over time, he'll turn into the competent 7-year-old who still wants to help."