Links - 3rd October 2019 (3)

Stare Down Gulls to Avoid Lunch Loss - Scientific American - "Gulls aren’t the only ones who behave better when being watched. A 2006 study found that people paid three times as much for their drinks at an unattended honor-system coffee bar when just an image of staring eyes was displayed nearby."

Tourist Photographs Help African Wildlife Census - Scientific American - "the estimates from tourist photos were just as good as those gleaned from traditional methods. And the tourists were actually the only ones to see elusive cheetahs—the researchers would have missed the cats without the citizen science data"

Attractive Young Females May Have Justice Edge - Scientific American - "Mock trial studies have suggested that attractive people have an edge in the criminal justice system. So Ferguson and his colleagues looked into that stereotype using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, the largest long-term study of people who began participating in the study as teens... Ferguson and his team looked at a subset of nearly 8,800 respondents and examined the correlation between attractiveness and arrest, conviction and sentencing. After controlling for things like gender, race and socioeconomic status, they found that attractiveness did have a protective effect—but only for females."Girls or women who are more attractive were less likely to be arrested if they'd committed a crime and less likely to be convicted if they were arrested for that crime. However, it did not have any impact on their sentencing. So once they were convicted, attractiveness conveyed no further benefits."

Rhinos and Their Gamekeepers Benefit from AI - Scientific American - "“What people don’t know is about a thousand gamekeepers—the UN kept numbers until, I think, 2014—have been murdered by poachers in order to get at the animals being protected. This is about humans. Well, how do you basically protect rhinos with AI? Well, that’s a good question. Being a kid who grew up in the Bronx my thought was, well, you know, you put a collar on the rhino, analyze where they are, their travel patterns. And the guy who ran the reserve in South Africa sort of laughed, said, ‘This does not help.’”... 'when the rhino stops moving you’ll know it was dead. That’s really not helpful.’... 'what you do is, get a bunch of animals that are easily spooked, like gazelles, antelopes, that sort of thing, and what you do is you collar them.’ We looked at that, and we thought about it and said, that’s brilliant, because they become sentinels. Because you see, when a poacher enters an area that it will encounter these creatures, it’s going to encounter rhinos, they’re by far more rare. When they encounter the creatures, like any other animal they spook and run.'"

Backpack Harvests Energy as You Walk - Scientific American - "Picture a pendulum mounted to a backpack frame and stabilized with springs on either side. The pack's weight is attached to the pendulum, so the pendulum swings side to side as you walk. Gears then use that swinging motion to drive a generator, and the generator spits out electrical current to charge a battery.Volunteers carried the pack while walking on a treadmill and wore masks to measure the flow of oxygen and carbon dioxide. Walking with the slightly swaying 20-pound load, the device did not significantly affect the volunteers' metabolic rate compared to when they carried the same weight fixed in place. In fact, the energy-harvesting pack reduced the forces of acceleration they'd feel in a regular pack, which might mean greater comfort for a long hike. And the device did produce a steady trickle of electricity—the operative word being trickle. Because if you up the load to 45 pounds, the passive motion of the pack could fully charge a Samsung Galaxy S10 smartphone only after 12 hours on the trail"

Some Hot Dog Histology - Scientific American - "he and his colleague Jordan Radigan got their hands on three types of dogs: a no-name brand from the supermarket, another all-beef dog and a third from a ballpark vendor. They then took cross sections for slides and used stains to identify different types of tissue. And found, to their surprise, that most slices consisted primarily of fat globules, with very little skeletal muscle—the stuff we tend to think of as "meat." In fact, the no-name brand actually had more skeletal muscle than the all-beef brand. The researchers also found bits of bone and blood vessels and cartilage—even plant material. How did vegetable matter get in there?"Let me put it this way. Sometimes I get biopsies from human colons and I find vegetable matter. I'll just leave it at that.""

Mind and Body Benefit from Two Hours in Nature Each Week - Scientific American - "Two hours a week. People who spent at least that much time amid nature—either all at once or totaled over several shorter visits—were more likely to report good health and psychological well-being than those with no nature exposure.Remarkably, the researchers found that less than two hours offered no significant benefits... the two-hour benchmark applied to men and women, to older and younger folks, to people from different ethnic backgrounds, occupational groups, socioeconomic levels and so on. Even people with long-term illnesses or disabilities benefited from time spent in nature—as long as it was at least 120 minutes per week"

Antiperspirant Boosts Armpit and Toe-Web Microbial Diversity - Scientific American - "the antiperspirant and foot powder actually boosted the diversity of microbes in the armpits and in between the toes—perhaps because those products change nutrient and moisture levels and thus create conditions that foster a wider variety of tiny occupants"

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Surveillance and Human Freedom - "[On Xinjiang] According to the Chinese state, it is necessary to counter terrorism. In echoes of Orwell’s doublethink they also say it's to improve human rights… Broadcasting House here where we are was the model for 1984’s Ministry of Truth...
‘It's interesting, isn't it that you revert to paedophiles and terrorists, you know, which is kind of feels unarguable, but this technology won’t just be used for pedophiles and terrorists. It’ll be used for burglars, it'll be used, goodness knows what it’ll be used for, it’ll be used for people with speeding records’…
‘Where's the human in this process? I've talked to citizens in a citizens jury, and they're very worried about what is called an automated decision systems or ADS. They don't want a decision about their insurance, about their criminality, about their health made by a machine with a black box algorithm which can't be explained to them.’"

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Love and Relationships - "‘When my partner says, I love you. I want them to be saying it to me, rather than to the cameras.’...
‘Love can be a performance, even if it's a private performance for one. I mean, if somebody wants to seduce somebody else, for some game, they might do in private, so the fact that there aren't cameras watching doesn't make it any more real’...
I think this polarization or binary look at love, which is that the deep love, the self sacrificial love that grows out of companionships. You know, a lot of societies, whether they're Asian or Middle Eastern, or Islamic, or you know, different religious fundamentalisms, will say that love is actually about sacrifice and just companionship, and it's not about the western hegemony of romantic love... to say that love has to be self sacrificial, I don't think that's absolutely true."

BBC Radio 4 - Homer, Hagrid and the Incredible Hulk - "'We live in an era now where to be nerdy is to be cool. Geek culture has taken over. There are cool people who pretend to be nerds now. That was unfathomable to me when I was a kid'...
'One of the things that makes it so appealing is that everyone starts at the same place.... All the fans initially start at that same place when that world comes out
a Ph.D who can come in and start telling you: nono, you're wrong about this that and the other. There's just the author and then there's you and your fellow fans. Obviously over time, as some people become deeper and deeper into it and continue with it, people will see them as sort of as experts, as we are considered experts, but I think there's a great general sense that everyone can become an expert on this in a way that you don't have to go to university and get a doctorate to be able to considered an expert or feel like you have an expertise in this area'...
'People look at us and they try to read the tea leaves of what we say to try to figure out what George is doing. So if I suddenly change one day my opinion on some theory, people will say oh George must have told them something and they're trying to reposition themselves. So I just stick to arguing sometimes quite strenuously the wrong point, because otherwise people will figure out maybe that something has changed in my knowledge. So yeah it is something that you have to be very careful with'...
'The people who think of comics of being, you know,pedestrian or childish, they're on the wrong side of history. Comic books were recognised as an American art form, I believe before jazz was'"

Blake Hammond on Twitter - "They say white people don’t have their own culture but I just got invited to a gender reveal party for a dog and there’s no way we appropriated that from anyone else."

Charles Luo - "Ironic innit? Fast fashion labels like H&M are the one of the biggest waste producers, based on UN environment statistics. But hey. They’re the good guy for charging you to use a bag that they used to provide for free."

Meme - "A man leapt from a second-floor apartment after his gun-slinging date tried to shoot him because he refused to give her oral sex"
"Why isn't it her mugshot there instead of his picture. And why wasn't she charged with sexual battery or attempted rape?? If this was a man he would have the charge"
"This is the woman's mugshot."

India lifted 271 million people out of poverty in 10 years: UN - "India lifted 271 million people out of poverty between 2006 and 2016, recording the fastest reductions in the multidimensional poverty index values during the period with strong improvements in areas such as “assets, cooking fuel, sanitation and nutrition”"
For those who claim democracy doesn't work and India is a basket case because of it compared to China

Doug Robertson's answer to Why do people get angry when I try to share the word of God with them? I only do it because I care about them deeply and don’t want them to end up in hell. I feel like some people avoid me because of this. Is there any way to get through to them? - Quora - "The entire process is not what you think it is.It is specifically designed to be uncomfortable for the other person because it isn’t about converting them to your religion. It is about manipulating you so you can’t leave yours.If this tactic was about converting people it would be considered a horrible failure. It recruits almost no one who isn’t already willing to join. Bake sales are more effective recruiting tools.On the other hand, it is extremely effective at creating a deep tribal feeling among its own members.The rejection they receive is actually more important than the few people they convert. It causes them to feel a level of discomfort around the people they attempt to talk to. These become the “others”. These uncomfortable feelings go away when they come back to their congregation, the “Tribe”.If you take a good look at the process it becomes fairly clear. In most cases, the religious person starts out from their own group, who is encouraging and supportive. They are then sent out into the harsh world where people repeatedly reject them. Mainly because they are trained to be so annoying.These brave witnesses then return from the cruel world to their congregation where they are treated like returning heroes. They are now safe. They bond as they share their experiences of reaching out to the godless people to bring them the truth. They share the otherness they experience.Once again they will learn that the only place they are accepted is with the people who think as they do. It isn’t safe to leave the group. The world is your enemy, but we love you.This is a pain reward cycle that is a common brainwashing technique. The participants become more and more reliant on the “Tribe” because they know that “others” reject them.Mix in some ritualized chanting, possibly a bit of monotonous repetition of instructions, add a dash of fear of judgment by an unseen, but all-powerful entity who loves you if you do as you are told and you get a pretty powerful mix.Sorry, I have absolutely no wish to participate in someones brainwashing ritual."

Straight Black Men Are the White People of Black People - "It feels counterintuitive to suggest that straight black men as a whole possess any sort of privilege—particularly the type of privilege created for and protected by whiteness. In America, we are near or at the bottom in every relevant metric determining quality of life. Our arrest and incarceration rates, our likelihood of dying a violent death, our likelihood of graduating high school and attending college, our employment rates, our average net worth, our likelihood of surviving past 70—I could continue, but the point is clear.But assessing our privilege (or lack thereof) on these facts considers only our relationship with whiteness and with America. Intraracially, however, our relationship to and with black women is not unlike whiteness’s relationship to us. In fact, it’s eerily similar."
Intersectionality meant it was only a matter of time before they were thrown under the bus too

Koran teacher who abused girl is spared jail to help his family - "An Islamic teacher who molested a girl as he taught her the Koran has avoided prison after claiming his family was dependent on him because his wife speaks “very little English”.Suleman Maknojioa, 40, repeatedly rubbed the 11-year-old’s leg and reached underneath her headscarf to touch her chest while giving her and her two brothers private tuition in Arabic.Maknojioa was said to have “favoured” the girl and believed the touching was “appropriate” to reassure her... He was later convicted of five counts of sexual activity but on Monday he was given a 40-week sentence suspended for two years after a court heard he was on benefits with a family reliant on him"