Links - 8th November 2019 (1)

Op-Ed: The best way to evaluate your beliefs? Engage with people who disagree with you - Los Angeles Times - "The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard famously observed that if everyone is a Lutheran then no one is a Lutheran. What he meant is that if you’re born into a culture in which everybody has a similar worldview, you don’t have an opportunity to develop genuine belief because your convictions are not subject to scrutiny.Put another way, if you don’t talk to people who hold different views, you will not know what they believe, and you won’t even know what you believe. Having conversations with people who hold beliefs different from yours affords you the opportunity to reflect — and only then can you evaluate whether your beliefs hold true... Reaching out and speaking with someone who has different ideas is beneficial, not for utopian social reasons, but for your own good — for your “belief hygiene.” You engage in dental hygiene not to bring insurance costs down for the masses, but because you don’t want cavities, pain and gum disease... Call out extremists on your side. Identify the authoritarians and fundamentalists who claim to represent your views and speak bluntly about how they take things too far. This is a way to build trust and signal that you’re not an extremist. (If you can’t figure out how your side goes too far, that may be a sign that you are part of the problem and need to moderate your beliefs.)"

Academic Freedom or Social Justice: What Kind of University is Portland State? - "“Dog Park” was, by far, the silliest of our papers, which was a point we always intended to reveal in full to the public once our audit was completed. In it we claimed, extremely implausibly, to have examined 10,000 dogs’ genitals before interrogating their owners about their sexual orientations. This clearly preposterous “data” was used as a basis for interpreting human reactions to unwanted dog-humping incidents so as to conclude that a human rape culture exists and could be improved by training men like dogs. We wanted to see if reviewers or editors would ask to see this data or question the conclusions we drew from it. They did not and, in fact, the paper was recognized for excellence within feminist geography.This is very troubling. So too is the fact that some academics are now claiming that the problem with this paper is that we didn’t actually examine dogs’ genitals by the thousands—that is, that we fabricated this data. Not only is this clearly missing the point, but it is a blatant distortion of the intentions of indispensable ethical rules about data fabrication. These rules are intended to penalize calculated deception of a very specific type. They’re meant to act as a safeguard against and a sanction for researchers who contrive to promote their own advancement directly by passing off and maintaining bogus data with no intention to reveal the truth, which does not apply in our case. They are not reasonably or honestly applicable—nor were they ever intended to be—to academic audits conducted in order to gain evidence of a systemic problem with knowledge production, which would ultimately be revealed as such in a timely manner."

Meth Addict Pretended To Be Police To Raid Drug User's House - "A crystal meth addict in Australia pretended to be police before raiding another drug user's house.Daniel Thomas stormed the house in Melbourne's east suburbs, before shouting: "This is a police raid. Get on the floor face down. Where are your drugs?" The two men in the house then handed over their crystal meth and cannabis stash, but Thomas, 36, believed they were withholding some and beat one of them with a hammer until he passed out.Thomas and a co-accused then said: "We've killed your mate. Now tell us where the drugs are."As the other victim stirred, he was hit around the head with the hammer and his buttocks were spread to check for drugs"

Teenager left blind and deaf by decade-long diet of sausages, crisps and processed food - "A teenager has been left blind and deaf after living off a diet of chips, crisps and sausages.The youngster’s family, from Bristol, realised something was seriously wrong when he began to lose his hearing at the age of 14.His eyesight also quickly deteriorated and he has now been left with no job and no social life as a result, his mother says.The woman, who asked not to be named, said her son began going off his meals when he was about seven years old and would only eat chips, Pringles, sausages, processed ham and white bread... “The processed food was not the problem per se. It was he was only eating that type of food and nothing else.""
No mention of parental responsibility

Mum Of Teen Who Went Blind After Living Off Crisps Says NHS Should Have Done More - "His mum Kerry James appeared on ITV's This Morning, where she said she believes that a vitamin A injection could have saved Harvey's sight. Kerry insisted that she's not a bad mum and explained that Harvey, who has ADHD, would be sick and would 'sweat, cry and scream' if he was offered any other food.She said: "I've done everything. I know people say it's probably because I'm a bad mum and neglected him. I don't listen to any of that."I've fought for Harvey from the age of two and I'll continue fighting until he has that healthy balance of life."

Maid of honor wears T-Rex costume after being told to wear 'anything' - "“When you’re maid of honor and told you can wear anything you choose … I regret nothing,” wrote Christina Meador alongside a Facebook photo of her wearing a T-Rex costume last month."

Woman Joins Tinder To Find Date And Ends Up Becoming A Porn Star - "Emily - better known now as Gianna Dior - was studying psychology and working two part-time jobs when she got Tinder in the hope of finding herself a date or two... The 21-year-old originally declined, however, her interest grew and she ended up giving it a bash. A year on, and she has ditched her former life and is working as a porn star full time, making around £750 per hour and amassing 390,000 followers on Instagram along the way."

German Doctor Who Killed Lover By Sprinkling Cocaine On Penis Jailed For Nine Years - "A German doctor has been jailed for nine years after causing the death of his lover when he sprinkled cocaine on his penis before she performed oral sex on him.Dr Andreas David Niederbichler, 43, was found guilty of grievous bodily harm which lead to the death of the 38-year-old woman... Niederbichler had put cocaine on his foreskin before having vaginal, anal and oral sex with three other women between September 2015 and February 2018.Prosecutors added that he would secretly add the drug into the drinks of women in a bid to make them more compliant to his sexual requests.Chief prosecutor Eva Vogel said: "He administered the cocaine to freely carry on further sex practices.""

How computing's first 'killer app' changed everything - "the real lesson of the spreadsheet is not about how monopolies rise and fall but about how technology changes things.It's a cliche that the robots are coming for our jobs.But the story is never as simple as that, as the digital spreadsheet proves.If the concept of a robot accountant means anything, surely it means VisiCalc or Excel. These programs put hundreds of thousands of accounting clerks out of work.Of course VisiCalc was revolutionary. Of course it was more efficient than a human.According to the Planet Money podcast, in the US alone, there are 400,000 fewer accounting clerks today than in 1980, the first full year that VisiCalc went on sale.But Planet Money also found that there were 600,000 more jobs for regular accountants. After all, crunching numbers had become cheaper, more versatile, and more powerful, so demand went up.The point is not really whether 600,000 is more than 400,000: sometimes automation creates jobs and sometimes it destroys them.The point is that automation reshapes the workplace in much subtler ways than "a robot took my job". In the age of the spreadsheet, the repetitive, routine parts of accountancy disappeared. What remained - and indeed flourished - required more judgement, more human skills.The spreadsheet created whole new industries.There are countless jobs in high finance that depend on exploring different numerical scenarios - tweaking the numbers and watching the columns recalculate themselves.These jobs barely existed before the electronic spreadsheet."

What can bees teach economists about how markets work? - "For James Meade, the perfect example of a positive externality was the relationship between apples and bees.Imagine, wrote Meade in 1952, a region containing some orchards and some bee-keeping. If the apple farmers planted more apple trees, the bee-keepers would benefit, because that would mean more honey.But the apple farmers wouldn't enjoy that benefit, that positive externality, and so they wouldn't plant as many apple trees as would be best for everyone. This was, according to Meade, "due simply and solely to the fact that the apple farmer cannot charge the bee-keeper for the bees' food".But there's a problem with his thesis. Apple blossom produces almost no honey. And that's only the first thing James Meade didn't know about bees... A couple of decades after James Meade's famous example, another economist, Steven Cheung, became curious about it - and he did something we economists perhaps don't do often enough: he called up some real people and asked them what actually happens. He discovered that apple farmers routinely paid bee-keepers for the service of pollinating their crops.For some other crops, the bee-keepers do indeed pay farmers for the right to harvest their nectar, the market Meade said should exist but could not. One example is mint, which doesn't need any help from bees but which produces good honey.So apples and bees aren't a good example of a positive externality, because the interaction does take place in a marketplace. And that marketplace is huge.These days, its centre of gravity is the California almond industry. Almonds occupy almost a million acres (4,000 sq km) of California - and farmers sell about $5bn (£3.9bn) worth per year. Almonds need honeybees - five colonies per hectare (10,000 sq m), rented for about $185 (£144) a colony."

Satan's Kingdom State Recreation Area – New Hartford, Connecticut - "Its name supposedly originates not out of any demonic rituals or religious activities, but rather because the area was horrible for farming. The story goes that a farmer cursed the land, saying nothing would grow in this rocky, unfertile soil because it was “Satan’s Kingdom.” And clearly, the name stuck.Another bit of local lore gives a different source for the name. It’s said that in earlier times, the area was a haven for thieves, robbers, and outlaws to the extent that “decent” people were afraid to visit. It was said that only “The Devil’s children” ruled there, hence the name “Satans Kingdom.”"

Australian Aviation Authorities Investigate Man Fishing While Being Carried By Drone - "The Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority is currently investigating a video that appears to show a man using a drone to lift himself off the floor in a chair before casting out a line and going fishing.Of course, this sort of thing could only happen in Australia. He's even got a bottle of Victoria Bitter in a cup holder next to him"

Female Dragonflies Fake Their Death To Avoid Males - "the female is seen freezing mid-air and plummeting to the ground, where she lies motionless until the male leaves.(When researchers approached the females, they immediately flew away — showing they remain alert throughout the fake death.)This behavior, which has been previously observed in five other species, is called ‘death feigning’. It’s believed to have developed as a survival tactic, since female dragonflies often risk injury or death when coerced into mating... On the opposite end of insect gender relations, male wolf spiders often play dead to avoid getting eaten after mating."

Anti-Semitism or Sarcasm? It's Immaterial to Bloomberg - "Unearthing social media posts to target public figures, and even ordinary citizens, has been a standard journalistic tactic for years now. We got a powerful reminder of that Tuesday morning when Bloomberg reporter Ben Penn wrote a story about a Trump administration official, accused of posting an anti-Semitic screed on Facebook in 2016. Within hours, the story had claimed a scalp: Labor Department lawyer Leif Olson had resigned. All in a day’s work for a crusading journalist. Except what Olson was accused of wasn’t remotely what had happened. What he wrote was actually the opposite of anti-Semitic. The Facebook post in question was a sarcastic send-up of Paul Nehlen, the alt-right anti-Semite who primaried then-Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Even the most obtuse social media maven would have been tipped off when Olson wrote of Ryan, “The guy just suffered a massive, historic, emasculating 70-point victory. Let’s see him and his Georgetown cocktail-party puppetmasters try to walk that one off.” Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter famously said that after 9/11 “irony was dead,” but apparently it took the election of Donald Trump for journalists to get out the backhoe and toss our collective sense of humor into the family plot."... All this is happening as the media continue to bemoan that a large portion of the public doesn’t respect them or, worse, is coming to get them. On Aug. 25, The New York Times ran a story headlined “Trump Allies Target Journalists Over Coverage Deemed Hostile to White House.” Once you read the story, however, it all seemed less ominous. The story was that Trump allies threatened to discredit journalists by, get this, publicizing what journalists have said on social media. “Operatives have closely examined more than a decade’s worth of public posts and statements by journalists, the people familiar with the operation said,” read the breathless report. The report, which was a news story and not an opinion piece, went so far as to argue that when journalists cast a critical eye on the public statements of others, that’s fair game -- but applying journalistic standards to journalists, however, was automatically an act of bad faith."
The logic of "punching up" - in the past we called it hypocrisy and double standards

DOL Lawyer Leif Olson Reinstated After 'Cancel Culture' Firing