"It is no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an Airport' appear." - Douglas Adams
***
Move Over Helicopter Parents. “iParents” Are Here. - "If you’re a parent and you’ve ever felt like you couldn’t stop using Facebook or Twitter even if you wanted to, guess what? You’re not alone. Retrevo found that 12% of all parents feel the same way and this number more than doubles when looking at iPhone owning parents (19%). Fortunately, most parents seem to exhibit normal social media usage patterns, but we did find that 11% of them said they’ve given up activities they used to enjoy because they spend time on Facebook or Twitter. 18% of iPhone owning parents feel the same way (compared to only 12% of Droid owning parents). Retrevo also found that iPhone owning parents are twice as likely to get nervous or anxious if they don’t check Facebook/Twitter (28%)."
This tells you something about iPhone users
Neighbourly sex no bother for Swedes: study - "The study has focused its research on social media, such as tweets and Facebook status updates, to find out what people say and think about their neighbours... Of the 1000 posts reviewed, some 15 percent concerned the moans and groans associated with sexual activity - the only category where a majority of the comments were positive. On the other hand, Swedes don’t seem to have much good to say about neighbours renovating, partying or emitting unidentified noises"
Dr. Kate Scannell: Maintaining weight loss after dieting -- a ghost of a chance - "By analyzing changes in blood hormones that regulate metabolism and stimulate appetite, they've newly established why we face such a fat chance of keeping off the weight. They've discovered the existence of hungry hormonal goblins that actually linger within dieters' blood for at least 12 months after dropping pounds. These entrenched hormonal goblins tempt dieters to eat, encourage them to store more fuel as body fat, and slow their metabolism"
Women Not as Romantic as Believed | News Tonight - "Men would more often fall in love within a few weeks as compared to women who would take months or more. It was also found that men were more likely to reveal to their partner about how they felt way before women did"
Though this is in line with women being more selective in mate choice, the analysis is misguided. Romantic tendencies are not the same as speed to commit, or to openly commit. Also this is more evidence to support the view that "when a lady says no, she means maybe" (or at least that if you take no to mean no, you will never get maybe or yes as an answer)
Zambia: Could this guy become the next president? - "Zambians have set an example on anti-racism, he said, and other Africans need to learn from this. People would prefer that we move forward and do not remain static in "colonialism nonsense", he added... Chitimukulu -- a known supporter of former president Rupiah Banda -- in 2009 denounced "Mr Sata's decision to pick a white man as his vice", querying who would replace the 74-year-old politician if he died since his deputy was "a white man". Chitimukulu told Mr Banda -- when the then President visited him at the palace -- that Zambians fought for independence, and that having a white man as Republican vice-president or president would mean the independence struggle was in vain. The racial remarks attracted denunciation from several Zambians"
Teen drama: Sex among 15 to 19 year olds drops -- or maybe not - "It's pretty clear that the flood of sexuality -- whether online, in print or on screen -- passes in full frontal view of those voracious media consumers: teenagers. Which might suggest that adolescents are having sex as frequently as they download a song -- except they aren’t, according to the latest research."
More reasons to doubt the monkey see monkey do theory of human behavior - or at least its stronger versions
Journalists, welcome to Robotland! - "Algorithms, smart robots which sort loads of information and arrange it according to users’ requests, are entering the newsroom... What is the next step? Will such robots become standalone content creators working like online news Trojans?"
How Understanding the Human Mind Might Save the World From CO2 - NYTimes.com - "People's attitudes do not translate into action. But most environmental activism remains centered around the assumption that changing behavior starts with changing attitudes and knowledge... Those who seek to gauge consumer behavior to learn how better to sell them products have known this principle for half a century, and since the 1990s, they have been adjusting for it in their research methods, Barnard said. That hasn't been the case in the world of climate change... Much research has shown that social networks have significant power to affect people's behaviors, and to find them, perhaps there is no better place to look than local communities"
Ahh... "Awareness"
Early Birds Linked to Higher Cardiovascular Risk, Study Says
Blog: CAIR's silence on pastor's apostasy death sentence is deafening - "Iranian apostasy law is consistent with mainstream Islam's rejection of freedom of conscience since the 7th century advent of the creed, through the clear modern dictates of the global Muslim umma's religio-political hierarchy as put forth in the 1990 Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, signed by all 56 member nations of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now the Organization of Islamic Cooperation)... The universality of these Islamic attitudes affects Muslim communities in the West, including North America. Syed Mumtaz Ali, the late architect of Canada's Sharia (Islamic Law) tribunal, and law professor Ali Khan, for example both have openly advocated extending Islamic apostasy laws to the West. Mumtaz Ali, in a disturbing essay, affirmed the traditional Islamic legal viewpoint that apostates must "choose between Islam and the sword," arguing further that if Canada were to act in accord with its own Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian government must grant the country's Islamic community authority to punish those Muslims who apostasize, or malign their faith... in April, 2009 Harvard Muslim chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser explained approvingly to a Muslim student that the traditional Islamic practice of executing apostates from Islam, remained both venerable, and applicable"
What walking speeds say about us - "Singapore came top of the table, followed by Copenhagen, Madrid and Guangzhou in China... People who walk fast are also more likely to speak and eat quickly, wear a watch and get impatient, he says. They don't like to sit still, sit in traffic or wait in queues... The correlation between walking speed and heart disease is very close"
Christian Louboutin On Painful Shoes - "For some a little discomfort is balanced by something else, which has to do with desire. You feel yourself, empower yourself, know yourself. You are aware of your body. This little act of discomfort pays off in lots of other ways"
Understanding Desire is key - and not just in this arena
Varieties of inequality - "We pay little attention to utility, and focus way too much on income inequality... I probably care less about income inequality than the average progressive. I think that’s partly because I’ve known lots of lower income people, and I’ve almost never found it to be the case that their income was the central problem in their lives... Almost every day I wonder where the outrage is over 400,000 drug users in jail. By comparison, over the past 5 years I’ve read dozens of stories about the 400 terror suspects at Guantanamo... It’s fine to worry about income inequality in the US. I also worry about this issue. But it’s important to keep in mind that there is much more to life than income inequality, and much more to the world than the US... let’s not hear any more talk from progressives like Paul Krugman about trade barriers against Chinese workers"
4 Bizarre Experiments That Should Never Be Repeated - "As time passed, it became clear that Peter didn’t want a mom; he wanted a girlfriend. The dolphin became uninterested in his lessons, and he started wooing Margaret by nibbling at her feet and legs. When his advances weren’t reciprocated, Peter got violent. He started using his nose and flippers to hit Margaret’s shins, which quickly became bruised. For a while, she wore rubber boots and carried a broom to fight off Peter’s advances. When that didn’t work, she started sending him out for conjugal visits with other dolphins"
Bestiality is not always non-consensual
John Berger ‘Ways of Seeing’ (1972) - "One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of women in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object – and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.’"
He (or she) who controls that which is in demand has power. He who demands that which is in short supply is vulnerable to exploitation. Objectification actually increases one's power - as long as one is an object of desire whose supply one controls
E. O. Wilson’s Theory of Everything - "Wilson defined sociobiology for me as “the systematic study of the biological basis of all forms of social behavior in all organisms.” Gould savagely mocked both Wilson’s ideas and his supposed hubris in a 1986 essay titled “Cardboard Darwinism,” in The New York Review of Books, for seeking “to achieve the greatest reform in human thinking about human nature since Freud,” and Wilson still clearly bears a grudge. “I believe Gould was a charlatan,” he told me. “I believe that he was … seeking reputation and credibility as a scientist and writer, and he did it consistently by distorting what other scientists were saying and devising arguments based upon that distortion.” It is easy to imagine Wilson privately resenting Gould for another reason, as well—namely, for choosing Freud as a point of comparison rather than his own idol, Darwin, whom he calls “the greatest man in the world”... Wilson was particularly unsparing of organized religion, likening the Book of Revelation, for example, to the ranting of “a paranoid schizophrenic who was allowed to write down everything that came to him.” Toward philosophy, he was only slightly kinder. Generation after generation of students have suffered trying to “puzzle out” what great thinkers like Socrates, Plato, and Descartes had to say on the great questions of man’s nature, Wilson said, but this was of little use, because philosophy has been based on “failed models of the brain”"
The China Factor in Taiwanese Politics - "The 2011 Taiwan National Security Survey includes four questions to explore precisely this form of conditionality of preferences on independence versus unification...
Q2. If the act of declaring independence will not cause Mainland China to attack Taiwan, do you favor or not favor Taiwan independence?
Not Favor: 18.4% Favor: 74.1% NA: 7.5%"
L'origine de Bert
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Burkha vs Bikini - if only they were fettered (or free) in the same way
Post ID: 6108531695951938132
Friday, November 11, 2011
Coffee, Tea, or...
Mother: Would you like a cup of tea, Jimmy?
Jim: Tea? Tea?! Is that your answer to it all? Tea? The panacea of the middle class! The answer to all the problems facing mankind today? Have a cup of tea, Jim! You both make me sick. You're dead, both of you. You're both mentally dead. Your souls are drowned in tea. Your minds are clogged up with tea bags. You're like two slop basins swimming around in a sea of tea! Just like this country, the whole rotten system, stained in a tea of apathy!
Father: What's he mean, Mum?
Mother: I don't think he wants a cup of tea. Would you like a cup of coffee, then?
Jim: Coffee? Coffee?! Is that your only alternative to the stagnant mess that's slowly choking you, a cup of coffee?
Mother: No. We've got some cocoa, I think.
--- Hancock's Half Hour
Jim: Tea? Tea?! Is that your answer to it all? Tea? The panacea of the middle class! The answer to all the problems facing mankind today? Have a cup of tea, Jim! You both make me sick. You're dead, both of you. You're both mentally dead. Your souls are drowned in tea. Your minds are clogged up with tea bags. You're like two slop basins swimming around in a sea of tea! Just like this country, the whole rotten system, stained in a tea of apathy!
Father: What's he mean, Mum?
Mother: I don't think he wants a cup of tea. Would you like a cup of coffee, then?
Jim: Coffee? Coffee?! Is that your only alternative to the stagnant mess that's slowly choking you, a cup of coffee?
Mother: No. We've got some cocoa, I think.
--- Hancock's Half Hour
Post ID: 3806538835933364217
Why not all Signs should be Gender Neutral
Imagine what this would look like as a gender neutral sign
Post ID: 820153354015349177
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Things to worry about in life
"FATWA - Saudi council of Muftis have given an unanimous Fatwa that ringtones on QURAN AAYAT are Haraam because the AAYAT are not complete when we pick the phone and the meanings of the AAYAT change when they are no completed..
Don't say 'Mosque', always say always 'Masjid'. Because Islam organization has found as mosque = mosquitoes.
Don't write 'Mecca'. Always write always correctly 'Makkah' because Mecca = house of wines.
Don't write 'Moh'd'. Always write always completely as 'Muhammad' because Moh'd = the dog with big mouth."
Post ID: 9157559138783522687
Links - 10th November 2011
"Sometimes the mind, for reasons we don't necessarily understand, just decides to go to the store for a quart of milk." - Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider
***
Tunisia's secular women fret erosion of freedoms with rise of Islamism - "The majority of women in this former French colony are less well-off, they are conservative, they wear the hijab or Islamic veil and, unlike women higher up the social scale, they are more comfortable speaking Arabic than French. But middle class, secularist women matter to Tunisia's prosperity because their layer of society traditionally provides its lawyers, bankers, marketing executives and creative minds... A few days before the election, Khemiri was handing out leaflets in support of a rival party with other women activists. "There were some men who looked at us and said: 'You keep doing what you're doing. But it's not going to last long. Soon you'll be staying at home'"... She said she had heard conservative men asking women "Why are you smoking?" and "Why are you wearing tight jeans?", and feared such remarks would become more common. Mouna, a 28-year-old who works in Ennasr's "Le Continental" bakery, described how a man came into the bakery on Tuesday and told her, "You should stay at home"... Khemiri said she was shocked to see separate queues for men and women at polling stations in areas where Ennahda is strong"
Prof or Hobo? - Quiz
I got 9/10
On the Perils of Living Dangerously in the Slasher Horror Film: Gender Differences in the Association Between Sexual Activity and Survival - "The slasher horror film has been deplored based on claims that it depicts eroticized violence against predominately female characters as punishment for sexual activities. To test this assertion, a quantitative content analysis was conducted to examine the extent to which gender differences are evident in the association between character survival and engagement in sexual activities. Information pertaining to gender, engagement in sexual activities, and survival was coded for film characters from a simple random sample of 50 English-language, North American slasher films released between 1960 and 2009. Results indicated that sexual female characters were less likely to survive and had significantly longer death scenes as compared to those female characters who did not engage in sexual behaviors."
Psychologist admits to faking dozens of scientific studies - "A preliminary investigative report issued on Monday by Tilburg University has concluded that dozens of research papers authored and co-authored by Stapel contain fabricated data... His research topics range from the effects of beauty product ads on consumer self-esteem, to how urban decay (like littered streets) promote stereotyping and discrimination"
Wife-beating study shocks Buddhist Bhutan's 'happiness' chief - "The survey by Bhutan's National Statistics Bureau found that roughly 70% of women say they deserved beating if they neglect children, argue with their partners, refuse sex or burn dinner, reported the Business Bhutan newspaper. The acceptance of domestic violence is highest (90 percent) among the women in Paro, a picturesque valley that's home to Bhutan's most revered monastery, Takshang. The capital city of Thimphu scores the lowest acceptance rate, about 50%, for wife beating... Covering 15,000 households, the Bhutan Multiple Indicator Survey also found that more than one in four women believe HIV/AIDS is transmitted supernaturally; one in four children do not attend school and one in five children are involved in child labor"
No wonder the Bhutanese are so happy. I suspect people in Thimphu are the least happy and those in Paro the most. Other data suggests this is true, as "the rural western Haa district recorded the highest GNH score, while people in the capital, Thimphu, scored significantly lower"
In Bhutan, pursuit of happiness is a tough mountain to climb - "One of the most damaging criticisms of GNH is associated with the national policy of preserving Bhutan’s ancient Buddhist culture. It was that policy — and anger about the country’s national dress and Dzongkha language being made compulsory — that led to protests from the large ethnic Nepali and Hindu minorities in the late 1980s and early ’90s and, ultimately, the expulsion of tens of thousands of them... But there is a more fundamental objection that strikes at the problem of making happiness a national goal. In Bhutan, some people are complaining that the government has no right to decide what makes them happy — not least when it banned smoking and made possession of cigarettes or tobacco a jailable offense in 2010. When a Buddhist monk was arrested and sentenced to three years in jail for possession of $2 to $3 worth of tobacco, even the normally quiescent Bhutanese rebelled. GNH was nicknamed “Gross National Harassment,” and a Facebook campaign helped crystallize the opposition. Although about 60 people are in prison, the government has promised to amend the law... Money is not everything, some critics say, but at least economic growth seems like an objective, measurable goal, while the pursuit of happiness is subjective, easily manipulated by the government to justify any policy it wants to implement. In the cities, people barely understand GNH, and in the villages, many farmers find its dogma frustrating. Under law inspired by Buddhism, they are not allowed to kill wild animals and are virtually powerless to prevent their crops from being eaten by wild boars, monkeys and elephants"
Teen prostitute brings daughter to work - "The woman said she enjoyed being a prostitute as she could satisfy her high sex drive and make money at the same time"
Many Rich Chinese Consider Leaving - WSJ.com - "The U.S. is the most popular emigration destination, according to the survey of 980 Chinese people with assets of more than 10 million yuan... the most common reason cited by respondents who were emigrating was their children's education, followed by a desire for better medical treatment, and the fear of pollution in China."
Half Of Young Professionals Value Facebook Access, Smartphone Options Over Salary: Report - "40% of college students and 45% of young professionals would accept lower-paying jobs if they had more access to social media, more choice in the devices they could use at work, and more flexibility in working remotely. More than half of the college students surveyed indicated that if an employer banned access to networks like Facebook at work, "they would either not accept a job offer from them or would join and find a way to circumvent"
College Has Been Oversold - "Over the past 25 years the total number of students in college has increased by about 50%. But the number of students graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (the so-called STEM fields) has been flat... In 2009 the U.S. graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual and performing arts graduates in 1985... Perhaps most oddly, despite the decline in the number of news media jobs, especially in the print media, the number of students in communication and journalism also has nearly doubled since 1985... As a result, more than half of all humanities graduates end up in jobs that don't require college degrees. Baggage porters and bellhops don't need college degrees, but in 2008 17.4% of them had at least a bachelor's degree and 45% had some college education"
It is one thing to say that we need Arts graduates, but it is another to say that it is fine to have more and more of them, but not more STEM graduates.
Comments elsewhere: "Art is great, but as the old saying goes, out of every 1000 people, 900 get to be workers, 90 get to be middle managers, 9 get to be executives, and 1 lucky s.o.b. gets to be the artist. Unfortuntely, at this point 200 out of every 1000 people want to be
the artist. That is not a recipe for happiness, nor is it a recipe for economic growth... Not surprisingly, these graduates don't get much of a financial "bonus" from college"
"Go and talk to someone with a PhD in a basic science working in a field otherwise filled with liberal arts majors. There are more than a few of them. And, very seriously, what would employers do without well-educated liberal arts grads willing to work very hard for not that much money?... over the course of time, the major is really not that big of a deal. The college degree has become what the high school diploma used to be---a credential that can open or shut the door. But the expertise is still picked up on the job more so than in the classroom... South Korea is looking at American liberal arts colleges for ideas because South Korea has produced graduates with technical expertise but they lack creativity"
"Many of these engineers who learn a set way of doing things haven't mastered the critical thinking skills they need to change course mid-career when different standards take hold. Their earnings suffer for it and longer time series data on wages show this"
"Social Science majors made more than Biology and Life Science majors at the BA level, and make equal amount at the graduate degree level"
"I'm a college math professor. The idea that those in the arts and humanities are somehow more creative, than say the Engineers or Scientists, is absurd."
Do Submissive Asian Women Exist? | Dating | 8Asians.com - "I look at my family and my first generation friend’s families – “traditional” Asian families – where the Asian man is allegedly the boss. But if I take a closer look, I see the Asian woman (the mom) making all the real decisions. Back when I was single I was NEVER afraid of the girlfriend’s dad, I was always more afraid of her mom. I knew who I needed to bow lower to. In these families, to an outsider, it may look like the Asian mom regularly defers to the dad but what is really going on is that the mom is only pretending to make it look like the dad has a say for the sake of saving face"
A feminist would probably disagree
"Zombie" attacks guard in nudist resort scuffle, deputies say
Malaysia's parallel judicial systems come up against legal challenges - "His estranged wife showed up at their child's school with a court order from a Sharia judge, who had granted her temporary custody of their 7-year-old. The wife took their daughter away with the help of Islamic officials and police. "If I had tried to stop them they would have arrested me," says Mr Tan. He says he had no idea his wife had become a Muslim. The next day his wife converted their daughter to Islam without Mr Tan's consent. That means both mother and child are now subject to Islamic law, which does not apply to non-Muslims like Mr Tan"
Bad, but inevitable: The consumerization of IT is accelerating - "IDC believes this primary focus on security is likely a fig leaf that IT is hiding behind, and surmises the real issue is IT wanting to maintain control of the infrastructure. On many occasions, IDC has seen IT managers play the security card when they don't want to accommodate something new. The range of issues surrounding consumerization of IT is in fact very wide, but security is a bogeyman, both easy to point to and very difficult to argue against"
***
Tunisia's secular women fret erosion of freedoms with rise of Islamism - "The majority of women in this former French colony are less well-off, they are conservative, they wear the hijab or Islamic veil and, unlike women higher up the social scale, they are more comfortable speaking Arabic than French. But middle class, secularist women matter to Tunisia's prosperity because their layer of society traditionally provides its lawyers, bankers, marketing executives and creative minds... A few days before the election, Khemiri was handing out leaflets in support of a rival party with other women activists. "There were some men who looked at us and said: 'You keep doing what you're doing. But it's not going to last long. Soon you'll be staying at home'"... She said she had heard conservative men asking women "Why are you smoking?" and "Why are you wearing tight jeans?", and feared such remarks would become more common. Mouna, a 28-year-old who works in Ennasr's "Le Continental" bakery, described how a man came into the bakery on Tuesday and told her, "You should stay at home"... Khemiri said she was shocked to see separate queues for men and women at polling stations in areas where Ennahda is strong"
Prof or Hobo? - Quiz
I got 9/10
On the Perils of Living Dangerously in the Slasher Horror Film: Gender Differences in the Association Between Sexual Activity and Survival - "The slasher horror film has been deplored based on claims that it depicts eroticized violence against predominately female characters as punishment for sexual activities. To test this assertion, a quantitative content analysis was conducted to examine the extent to which gender differences are evident in the association between character survival and engagement in sexual activities. Information pertaining to gender, engagement in sexual activities, and survival was coded for film characters from a simple random sample of 50 English-language, North American slasher films released between 1960 and 2009. Results indicated that sexual female characters were less likely to survive and had significantly longer death scenes as compared to those female characters who did not engage in sexual behaviors."
Psychologist admits to faking dozens of scientific studies - "A preliminary investigative report issued on Monday by Tilburg University has concluded that dozens of research papers authored and co-authored by Stapel contain fabricated data... His research topics range from the effects of beauty product ads on consumer self-esteem, to how urban decay (like littered streets) promote stereotyping and discrimination"
Wife-beating study shocks Buddhist Bhutan's 'happiness' chief - "The survey by Bhutan's National Statistics Bureau found that roughly 70% of women say they deserved beating if they neglect children, argue with their partners, refuse sex or burn dinner, reported the Business Bhutan newspaper. The acceptance of domestic violence is highest (90 percent) among the women in Paro, a picturesque valley that's home to Bhutan's most revered monastery, Takshang. The capital city of Thimphu scores the lowest acceptance rate, about 50%, for wife beating... Covering 15,000 households, the Bhutan Multiple Indicator Survey also found that more than one in four women believe HIV/AIDS is transmitted supernaturally; one in four children do not attend school and one in five children are involved in child labor"
No wonder the Bhutanese are so happy. I suspect people in Thimphu are the least happy and those in Paro the most. Other data suggests this is true, as "the rural western Haa district recorded the highest GNH score, while people in the capital, Thimphu, scored significantly lower"
In Bhutan, pursuit of happiness is a tough mountain to climb - "One of the most damaging criticisms of GNH is associated with the national policy of preserving Bhutan’s ancient Buddhist culture. It was that policy — and anger about the country’s national dress and Dzongkha language being made compulsory — that led to protests from the large ethnic Nepali and Hindu minorities in the late 1980s and early ’90s and, ultimately, the expulsion of tens of thousands of them... But there is a more fundamental objection that strikes at the problem of making happiness a national goal. In Bhutan, some people are complaining that the government has no right to decide what makes them happy — not least when it banned smoking and made possession of cigarettes or tobacco a jailable offense in 2010. When a Buddhist monk was arrested and sentenced to three years in jail for possession of $2 to $3 worth of tobacco, even the normally quiescent Bhutanese rebelled. GNH was nicknamed “Gross National Harassment,” and a Facebook campaign helped crystallize the opposition. Although about 60 people are in prison, the government has promised to amend the law... Money is not everything, some critics say, but at least economic growth seems like an objective, measurable goal, while the pursuit of happiness is subjective, easily manipulated by the government to justify any policy it wants to implement. In the cities, people barely understand GNH, and in the villages, many farmers find its dogma frustrating. Under law inspired by Buddhism, they are not allowed to kill wild animals and are virtually powerless to prevent their crops from being eaten by wild boars, monkeys and elephants"
Teen prostitute brings daughter to work - "The woman said she enjoyed being a prostitute as she could satisfy her high sex drive and make money at the same time"
Many Rich Chinese Consider Leaving - WSJ.com - "The U.S. is the most popular emigration destination, according to the survey of 980 Chinese people with assets of more than 10 million yuan... the most common reason cited by respondents who were emigrating was their children's education, followed by a desire for better medical treatment, and the fear of pollution in China."
Half Of Young Professionals Value Facebook Access, Smartphone Options Over Salary: Report - "40% of college students and 45% of young professionals would accept lower-paying jobs if they had more access to social media, more choice in the devices they could use at work, and more flexibility in working remotely. More than half of the college students surveyed indicated that if an employer banned access to networks like Facebook at work, "they would either not accept a job offer from them or would join and find a way to circumvent"
College Has Been Oversold - "Over the past 25 years the total number of students in college has increased by about 50%. But the number of students graduating with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (the so-called STEM fields) has been flat... In 2009 the U.S. graduated 89,140 students in the visual and performing arts, more than in computer science, math and chemical engineering combined and more than double the number of visual and performing arts graduates in 1985... Perhaps most oddly, despite the decline in the number of news media jobs, especially in the print media, the number of students in communication and journalism also has nearly doubled since 1985... As a result, more than half of all humanities graduates end up in jobs that don't require college degrees. Baggage porters and bellhops don't need college degrees, but in 2008 17.4% of them had at least a bachelor's degree and 45% had some college education"
It is one thing to say that we need Arts graduates, but it is another to say that it is fine to have more and more of them, but not more STEM graduates.
Comments elsewhere: "Art is great, but as the old saying goes, out of every 1000 people, 900 get to be workers, 90 get to be middle managers, 9 get to be executives, and 1 lucky s.o.b. gets to be the artist. Unfortuntely, at this point 200 out of every 1000 people want to be
the artist. That is not a recipe for happiness, nor is it a recipe for economic growth... Not surprisingly, these graduates don't get much of a financial "bonus" from college"
"Go and talk to someone with a PhD in a basic science working in a field otherwise filled with liberal arts majors. There are more than a few of them. And, very seriously, what would employers do without well-educated liberal arts grads willing to work very hard for not that much money?... over the course of time, the major is really not that big of a deal. The college degree has become what the high school diploma used to be---a credential that can open or shut the door. But the expertise is still picked up on the job more so than in the classroom... South Korea is looking at American liberal arts colleges for ideas because South Korea has produced graduates with technical expertise but they lack creativity"
"Many of these engineers who learn a set way of doing things haven't mastered the critical thinking skills they need to change course mid-career when different standards take hold. Their earnings suffer for it and longer time series data on wages show this"
"Social Science majors made more than Biology and Life Science majors at the BA level, and make equal amount at the graduate degree level"
"I'm a college math professor. The idea that those in the arts and humanities are somehow more creative, than say the Engineers or Scientists, is absurd."
Do Submissive Asian Women Exist? | Dating | 8Asians.com - "I look at my family and my first generation friend’s families – “traditional” Asian families – where the Asian man is allegedly the boss. But if I take a closer look, I see the Asian woman (the mom) making all the real decisions. Back when I was single I was NEVER afraid of the girlfriend’s dad, I was always more afraid of her mom. I knew who I needed to bow lower to. In these families, to an outsider, it may look like the Asian mom regularly defers to the dad but what is really going on is that the mom is only pretending to make it look like the dad has a say for the sake of saving face"
A feminist would probably disagree
"Zombie" attacks guard in nudist resort scuffle, deputies say
Malaysia's parallel judicial systems come up against legal challenges - "His estranged wife showed up at their child's school with a court order from a Sharia judge, who had granted her temporary custody of their 7-year-old. The wife took their daughter away with the help of Islamic officials and police. "If I had tried to stop them they would have arrested me," says Mr Tan. He says he had no idea his wife had become a Muslim. The next day his wife converted their daughter to Islam without Mr Tan's consent. That means both mother and child are now subject to Islamic law, which does not apply to non-Muslims like Mr Tan"
Bad, but inevitable: The consumerization of IT is accelerating - "IDC believes this primary focus on security is likely a fig leaf that IT is hiding behind, and surmises the real issue is IT wanting to maintain control of the infrastructure. On many occasions, IDC has seen IT managers play the security card when they don't want to accommodate something new. The range of issues surrounding consumerization of IT is in fact very wide, but security is a bogeyman, both easy to point to and very difficult to argue against"
Post ID: 6896864534504121275
Wednesday, November 09, 2011
Tolerance and Otherness
On a ridiculous video on religious tolerance which says that you should never critique anyone's religious beliefs (and which someone pointed out is Scientologist Propaganda):
"Tolerance is a terrible cornerstone on which to establish human relations. Tolerance or intolerance, they both imply a fundamental opposition. Tolerance doesn't help establish human relation -- in fact it does exactly the opposite. To be "tolerant" is to bury your hostilities under a smiling veneer of politeness, to wave away all the differences and pretend to get along. "Oh those funny foreigners, they're so weird, but let's try not to let them know how weird we think they are. Let's tolerate them. Let's shuffle them into a corner so that their weirdness doesn't bother us so much." Should the teacher in this video merely "tolerate" his Hindu student? Or should he, y'know, try to find a point of understanding?
The problem with a doctrine of tolerance is that it does not encourage any kind of introspection. A person who is tolerant does not resolve his own hostility. He maintains that barrier of otherness which just perpetuates the marginalisation. He rationalises that if he is bothered by the strangeness of the Other, why, that's just a function of the Other's kooky foreign ways. He effectively places all the blame on the Other for being so different. But that's okay. He's going to tolerate the Other. He's going to suffer the Other's strangeness for a little while longer. Does that sound to you like a good cornerstone on which to build a relationship?
It's frustrating to me that a video that's so well-made can so stunningly fail to grasp its own subject matter. It condenses the very real, very pressing issue of marginalisation into an overly-simplistic moralisation about not mocking other cultures, and all the while it indulges in the very same kind of generalisation that CREATES the marginalisation in the first place. Here, all atheists are typified by the wrinkle-faced white teacher who takes out his frustration with the unknown by directing a laser pointer at the head of a Hindu student. Because apparently the fact of not buying into someone's culture automatically means you're going to laugh at it.
The implication here is that all differences automatically lead to hostility, so "Let's just try to hide our hostility as best we can." How very depressing."
My (shorter) comment:
"Wow I did not realise that disagreeing with someone meant I was intolerant and it would lead to war and death. I will never disagree with anybody again!"
"Tolerance is a terrible cornerstone on which to establish human relations. Tolerance or intolerance, they both imply a fundamental opposition. Tolerance doesn't help establish human relation -- in fact it does exactly the opposite. To be "tolerant" is to bury your hostilities under a smiling veneer of politeness, to wave away all the differences and pretend to get along. "Oh those funny foreigners, they're so weird, but let's try not to let them know how weird we think they are. Let's tolerate them. Let's shuffle them into a corner so that their weirdness doesn't bother us so much." Should the teacher in this video merely "tolerate" his Hindu student? Or should he, y'know, try to find a point of understanding?
The problem with a doctrine of tolerance is that it does not encourage any kind of introspection. A person who is tolerant does not resolve his own hostility. He maintains that barrier of otherness which just perpetuates the marginalisation. He rationalises that if he is bothered by the strangeness of the Other, why, that's just a function of the Other's kooky foreign ways. He effectively places all the blame on the Other for being so different. But that's okay. He's going to tolerate the Other. He's going to suffer the Other's strangeness for a little while longer. Does that sound to you like a good cornerstone on which to build a relationship?
It's frustrating to me that a video that's so well-made can so stunningly fail to grasp its own subject matter. It condenses the very real, very pressing issue of marginalisation into an overly-simplistic moralisation about not mocking other cultures, and all the while it indulges in the very same kind of generalisation that CREATES the marginalisation in the first place. Here, all atheists are typified by the wrinkle-faced white teacher who takes out his frustration with the unknown by directing a laser pointer at the head of a Hindu student. Because apparently the fact of not buying into someone's culture automatically means you're going to laugh at it.
The implication here is that all differences automatically lead to hostility, so "Let's just try to hide our hostility as best we can." How very depressing."
My (shorter) comment:
"Wow I did not realise that disagreeing with someone meant I was intolerant and it would lead to war and death. I will never disagree with anybody again!"
Post ID: 3485781020443261680
The wound which never heals
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it." - Yogi Berra
***
""We've behaved badly, boss. You laughed, so did I, and she saw us. And the way you left, without any fine words, as if she was an old bag of a hundred. What a damn shame! It's not polite, boss. That's not the way for a man to behave, let me tell you. She's a woman, after all, isn't she? A weak, fretful creature. A good job I stayed behind to console her."
"But what do you mean, Zorba?" I replied. "Do you seriously think all women have nothing else but that in mind?"
"Yes, boss, they've nothing else in mind. Listen to me, now… I've seen all sorts, and I've done all kinds of things… A woman has nothing else in view. She's a sickly creature, I tell you, and fretful. If you don't tell her you love and want her, she starts crying. Maybe she doesn't want you at all, maybe you disgust her, maybe she says no. That's another story. But all men who see her must desire her. That's what she wants, the poor creature, so you might try and please her!
"I had a grandmother, she must have been eighty. What a tale that old soul's life would make! Never mind, that's another story, too… Well, she must have been eighty in the shade, and opposite our house lived a younger girl as fresh as a flower… Krystallo she was called. Every Saturday evening, raw young bloods of the village would meet for a drink, and the wine made us lively. We stuck a sprig of basil behind our ears, one of my cousins took his guitar, and we went serenading. What love! What passion! We bellowed like bulls! We all wanted her, and every Saturday we went in a herd for her to make her choice.
"Well, would you believe it, boss? It's a mystery! Women have a wound which never heals. Every wound heals but that one-don't you take any notice of your books-that one never heals. What, just because a woman's eighty? The wound's still open.
"So every Saturday the old girl pulled her mattress up to the window, took out her little mirror and combed away at the little bits of thatch she had left, and carefully made a parting. She'd look round slyly, for fear someone saw her. If anyone came near, she'd snuggle back and look as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, pretending she was dozing. But how could she sleep? She was waiting for the serenade. At eighty! You see what a mystery woman is, boss! Just now it makes me want to cry. But at that time I was just harum-scarum, I didn't understand and it made me laugh. One day I got annoyed with her. She was hauling me over the coals because I was running after the girls, so I told her straight out where to get off: 'Why do you rub walnut leaves over your lips every Saturday, and part your hair? I s'pose you think we come to serenade you? It's Krystallo we're after. You're just a stinking old corpse!'
"Would you believe it, boss! That day was the first time I knew what a woman was. Two tears sprang into my grandma's eyes. She curled up like a dog, and her chin trembled. 'Krystallo!' I shouted, going nearer so as she'd hear better. 'Krystallo!' Young people are cruel beasts, they're inhuman, they don't understand. My grandma raised her skinny arms to heaven. 'Curse you from the bottom of my heart!' she cried. That very day she started to go into a decline. She wasted away and two months later, her days were numbered. Then when she was at her last gasp she saw me. She hissed like a turtle and tried to grab me with her withered fingers. 'It was you who finished me off. May you be damned, Alexis, and suffer all I have!'"
Zorba smiled.
"Ah, the old witch's curse has hit home!" he said, stroking his moustache. "I'm in my sixty-fifth year, I think, but even if I live to be a hundred I'll never lay off. I'll still have a little mirror in my pocket, and I'll still be running after the female of the species."
He smiled once more, threw his cigarette through the fanlight, stretched his arms and said:
"I've plenty of other faults, but that is the one that'll kill me.""
--- Zorba the Greek / Nikos Kazantzakis
Me: hee
so do you relate to the quote
Someone: i think it's pretty obvious :p
***
""We've behaved badly, boss. You laughed, so did I, and she saw us. And the way you left, without any fine words, as if she was an old bag of a hundred. What a damn shame! It's not polite, boss. That's not the way for a man to behave, let me tell you. She's a woman, after all, isn't she? A weak, fretful creature. A good job I stayed behind to console her."
"But what do you mean, Zorba?" I replied. "Do you seriously think all women have nothing else but that in mind?"
"Yes, boss, they've nothing else in mind. Listen to me, now… I've seen all sorts, and I've done all kinds of things… A woman has nothing else in view. She's a sickly creature, I tell you, and fretful. If you don't tell her you love and want her, she starts crying. Maybe she doesn't want you at all, maybe you disgust her, maybe she says no. That's another story. But all men who see her must desire her. That's what she wants, the poor creature, so you might try and please her!
"I had a grandmother, she must have been eighty. What a tale that old soul's life would make! Never mind, that's another story, too… Well, she must have been eighty in the shade, and opposite our house lived a younger girl as fresh as a flower… Krystallo she was called. Every Saturday evening, raw young bloods of the village would meet for a drink, and the wine made us lively. We stuck a sprig of basil behind our ears, one of my cousins took his guitar, and we went serenading. What love! What passion! We bellowed like bulls! We all wanted her, and every Saturday we went in a herd for her to make her choice.
"Well, would you believe it, boss? It's a mystery! Women have a wound which never heals. Every wound heals but that one-don't you take any notice of your books-that one never heals. What, just because a woman's eighty? The wound's still open.
"So every Saturday the old girl pulled her mattress up to the window, took out her little mirror and combed away at the little bits of thatch she had left, and carefully made a parting. She'd look round slyly, for fear someone saw her. If anyone came near, she'd snuggle back and look as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, pretending she was dozing. But how could she sleep? She was waiting for the serenade. At eighty! You see what a mystery woman is, boss! Just now it makes me want to cry. But at that time I was just harum-scarum, I didn't understand and it made me laugh. One day I got annoyed with her. She was hauling me over the coals because I was running after the girls, so I told her straight out where to get off: 'Why do you rub walnut leaves over your lips every Saturday, and part your hair? I s'pose you think we come to serenade you? It's Krystallo we're after. You're just a stinking old corpse!'
"Would you believe it, boss! That day was the first time I knew what a woman was. Two tears sprang into my grandma's eyes. She curled up like a dog, and her chin trembled. 'Krystallo!' I shouted, going nearer so as she'd hear better. 'Krystallo!' Young people are cruel beasts, they're inhuman, they don't understand. My grandma raised her skinny arms to heaven. 'Curse you from the bottom of my heart!' she cried. That very day she started to go into a decline. She wasted away and two months later, her days were numbered. Then when she was at her last gasp she saw me. She hissed like a turtle and tried to grab me with her withered fingers. 'It was you who finished me off. May you be damned, Alexis, and suffer all I have!'"
Zorba smiled.
"Ah, the old witch's curse has hit home!" he said, stroking his moustache. "I'm in my sixty-fifth year, I think, but even if I live to be a hundred I'll never lay off. I'll still have a little mirror in my pocket, and I'll still be running after the female of the species."
He smiled once more, threw his cigarette through the fanlight, stretched his arms and said:
"I've plenty of other faults, but that is the one that'll kill me.""
--- Zorba the Greek / Nikos Kazantzakis
Me: hee
so do you relate to the quote
Someone: i think it's pretty obvious :p
Post ID: 191666300009717717
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
An instance when Siri fails
iPhone user to Siri: "What is the time difference between Hong Kong and Las Vegas?"
Siri: "Just a minute..."
iPhone user: "Thanks!" and proceeds to turn off the iPhone.
(via)
Siri: "Just a minute..."
iPhone user: "Thanks!" and proceeds to turn off the iPhone.
(via)
Post ID: 4255471363387390466
Links - 8th November 2011
"The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened." - Saki
***
What is this foolish lust for uncertainty? - "Vernon says: "We live in an age intolerant of doubt." But it seems to me that there is at least a class of educated, liberal westerners for whom the opposite is true. Uncertainty is what they desire more than anything else. This seems to me to have two sources, "dogmatophobia" and binary thinking... People who would not tolerate even the sniff of sexism in their workplace bend over backwards to allow religious traditions their "right" to systemically discriminate against women... there is no choice that has to be made between certainty and uncertainty. Rather, certainty is a matter of degree. It may be that nothing is certain, but not everything is equally uncertain. It is not certain that global warming is both real and anthropogenic, but that does not mean that those who advocate action on the belief that it is have fallen victim to a lust for certainty. The mistaken ones are those who make too much of this uncertainty and use it as a reason for inaction... The main problem with young-Earth creationists who assert that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, for instance, is not that they are certain, but that they are wrong. It's the matter of the belief that is pernicious, not just the manner of its holding"
The Body Odd - Want to catch a lady's eye? Don't smile, study says - "Women ranked the smiling guys as less attractive -- but they were into the prideful and ashamed men. But the male participants were most attracted to the smiling women, and least attracted to the ones who seemed proud... the fact that women find shame more attractive may also help explain the attractiveness of the "bad boy" -- the one who seems like he can be turned around"
Women and the Arab awakening: Now is the time | The Economist - "The old quota system was bad, acknowledges Mozn Hassan, the director of Nazra for Feminist Studies, a Cairo-based organisation that researches women’s rights and whose members include a number of Islamic feminists. “It put women in high positions without the relevant experience. Only those with money could do it. It gave a bad impression of women.” Under the new list system, women are unlikely to win many seats, she admits. But it is better to have ten women in parliament who have worked hard and deserve to be there, she insists, than to have many more who have no idea what they are doing. Ms Hassan also advises women MPs to show the country what they can do; to try to get on to the health or economics committees, rather than committees aimed specifically at women, and to give those mostly-male forums a woman’s perspective... Society is already so fragmented, she argues, that it makes no sense to add another division setting women against everyone else; this is a time for everyone’s freedoms, not women’s in particular"
Prostate cancer diagnosis raises risk of suicide - "Being diagnosed with prostate cancer roughly doubles the risk of suicide or death from a heart attack"
Obama Joker vs. Bush Joker: "The Socialist Joker" Inflames the Left - "
In 2004 the very same L.A. Weekly ran this picture depicting President George W. Bush as Dracula, his mouth dripping with the blood of innocents from around the world... just 13 months ago, Vanity Fair depicted Bush as none other than, voila, the Joker! With no chorus of complaints from the Left!... Notably, these caricatures of Bush appeared neither on solitary highway stanchions nor on the walls of buildings in vacant lots, but rather in major publications of the political and social Left. This is to say nothing of the many published cartoons that routinely depicted Bush as a primate. One September 2007 Huffington Post story, in fact, actually bore the title, “New Scientific Study Reveals Bush Is a Chimp.” What would be the Left’s reaction if a conservative were to make a similar assertion about Obama? Bush was also commonly caricatured by the Left as Adolph Hitler"
Ohio University Students Hit ‘Racist’ Halloween Costumes - "Each poster in the series shows an Ohio University student of a different ethnicity holding a photograph of an offensive costume. An Asian girl holds an image of someone dressed up as a geisha. A Mexican boy holds a photo of someone in a sombrero, colorful poncho and exaggerated mustache riding a stuffed donkey. Other images show a terrorist costume, a Native American costume and a gangster."
One commenter: "ANY Halloween costume is offensive to some group. How about discourtesy to not-so-sexy-nurses? Or being disrespectful to the dead? Halloween itself is offensive to many, as well as such celebrations as Christmas (because not everyone is Christian in North America). Shall we ban these holidays altogether? No more Christmas tree on Times Square?!! Down with Easter eggs and bunnies in shop windows?" Naturally they just delete comments disagreeing with them.
Is Justice Sonia Sotomayor, praised as an example of "ingenious stereotype-free costumes", then problematic if the person is not Hispanic? Is it racist for non-whites to dress up as medieval knights? Again the ghettoisation of minority cultures in the crusade to stir up grievances just hurts minorities
South Korea Embraces the Talmud - "Close to 50 million people live in South Korea, and almost everyone is taught the Talmud at home by their parents. "We tried to understand why the Jews are geniuses, and we came to the conclusion that we think it is because they study the Talmud," said the Korean ambassador to Israel, Young Sam Ma"
Marginalization among the marginalized: gay men's anti-effeminacy attitudes. - "A great number of gay men exhibit gender nonconformity during childhood; most, however, "defeminize" during adolescence, possibly in response to stigmatization and society's gender-role prescription. Only a relatively small percentage of gay men continue to be gender-nonconforming in their adulthood, often at a price, as they also tend to have lower psychological well-being. Although gay culture historically appreciated camp and drag, which subvert the gender-based power hierarchy and celebrate gender nonconformity, anti-effeminacy prejudice is widespread among gay men. Ironically, gender-nonconforming gay men may suffer from discrimination not only from society at large, but from other gay men, who are most likely to have experienced stigmatization and may have been effeminate earlier in their lives. Drawing from anecdotes and findings from various sources, this article suggests that beyond many gay men's erotic preference for masculinity lies contempt and hostility toward effeminacy and effeminate men on sociopolitical and personal levels"
Focusing on anti-gay discrimination by non-gays elides over real problems Group rights are problematic whenever the group is diverse and not homogenous (i.e. always).
both sexes talk longer with women - "Smorda and Licoppe (2000)’s finding that both females and males talk significantly longer when they call females is consistent with psychological tests of implicit gender preferences... Scholars who assert that “men are culturally valued more than women” (whatever that means) see gender preferences as a social anomaly"
Why women apologize more than men: gender differences in thresholds for perceiving offensive behavior. - "Women reported offering more apologies than men, but they also reported committing more offenses. There was no gender difference in the proportion of offenses that prompted apologies. This finding suggests that men apologize less frequently than women because they have a higher threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior"
Addendum: A corollary - women are more petty than men (keywords: women are pettier than men)
Indo Chinese Food ~ Chicken Manchurian
I should try this
Sudanese Preacher Sheik Muhammad Al-Amin Ismail Accuses Shiites of Distributing Anti-Sunni Toy Guns - "I've brought you an example [of toys manufactured by Shiites]. We all hope that the brothers who supervise these products, and their import and export, will ban products such as these. Holds up a toy pistol... Shoots the pistol, which emits shooting sounds and a metallic voice: "Go, go, go. Pull over. Save the hostages." It says: "Shoot 'Aisha" [the Prophet Muhammad's wife]. This is for children. "Shoot 'Aisha."
You don't need Westerners to persecute Muslims - they are quite good at doing it to each other already
Attitudes and the Implicit Association Test - "Three studies examined the relationship between the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998) and explicit attitudes. In the 1st and all subsequent studies, the lack of any correlation between the IAT and explicitly measured attitudes supports the view that the IAT is independent from explicit attitudes. Study 2 examined the relationships among the IAT, explicit attitudes, and behavior and found that the explicit attitudes predicted behavior but the IAT did not. Finally, in Study 3 it was found that the IAT was affected by exposing participants to new associations between attitude objects, whereas the explicit attitudes remained unchanged. Taken together, these results support an environmental association interpretation of the IAT in which IAT scores reflect the associations a person has been exposed to in his or her environment rather than the extent to which the person endorses those evaluative associations."
Another study provocatively titled "Would Jesse Jackson 'Fail' the Implicit Association Test?" comments that "the patterns of judgment deemed to be indicative of prejudice pass tests deemed to be diagnostic of rational behavior" (which I think means "stereotypes persist and endure because they are often true") and yet another critiques the I, A and T. I always knew that there was something wrong with the IAT, and the grievance industry is just abusing it for its own ends. Finally, this is evidence that using it to witchhunt prejudice is barking up the wrong tree!
Addendum: Does the Implicit Association Test (IAT) Really Measure Racial Prejudice? Probably Not.
Algérie : vote d'une loi accusée de limiter la représentativité féminine - "Le chiffre initial de 30% de femmes était conforme à la convention des Nations unies sur l’élimination des discriminations envers les femmes. Mais le nouveau texte a opté pour une seconde option : un taux de représentativité des femmes variable selon les circonscriptions. Le taux est ainsi de 20% pour les wilayas (préfecture) ayant quatre sièges à l’Assemblée nationale, 30% pour plus de 5 sièges, 35% pour 14 sièges et plus, et enfin 40% pour plus de 32 sièges. La communauté algérienne à l'étranger a, quant à elle, droit à un pourcentage de 50%. Au total, la nouvelle loi instaure un taux de 20% pour 14 des 48 wilayas que compte l’Algérie."
Un homme, une voix, une fois !
***
What is this foolish lust for uncertainty? - "Vernon says: "We live in an age intolerant of doubt." But it seems to me that there is at least a class of educated, liberal westerners for whom the opposite is true. Uncertainty is what they desire more than anything else. This seems to me to have two sources, "dogmatophobia" and binary thinking... People who would not tolerate even the sniff of sexism in their workplace bend over backwards to allow religious traditions their "right" to systemically discriminate against women... there is no choice that has to be made between certainty and uncertainty. Rather, certainty is a matter of degree. It may be that nothing is certain, but not everything is equally uncertain. It is not certain that global warming is both real and anthropogenic, but that does not mean that those who advocate action on the belief that it is have fallen victim to a lust for certainty. The mistaken ones are those who make too much of this uncertainty and use it as a reason for inaction... The main problem with young-Earth creationists who assert that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, for instance, is not that they are certain, but that they are wrong. It's the matter of the belief that is pernicious, not just the manner of its holding"
The Body Odd - Want to catch a lady's eye? Don't smile, study says - "Women ranked the smiling guys as less attractive -- but they were into the prideful and ashamed men. But the male participants were most attracted to the smiling women, and least attracted to the ones who seemed proud... the fact that women find shame more attractive may also help explain the attractiveness of the "bad boy" -- the one who seems like he can be turned around"
Women and the Arab awakening: Now is the time | The Economist - "The old quota system was bad, acknowledges Mozn Hassan, the director of Nazra for Feminist Studies, a Cairo-based organisation that researches women’s rights and whose members include a number of Islamic feminists. “It put women in high positions without the relevant experience. Only those with money could do it. It gave a bad impression of women.” Under the new list system, women are unlikely to win many seats, she admits. But it is better to have ten women in parliament who have worked hard and deserve to be there, she insists, than to have many more who have no idea what they are doing. Ms Hassan also advises women MPs to show the country what they can do; to try to get on to the health or economics committees, rather than committees aimed specifically at women, and to give those mostly-male forums a woman’s perspective... Society is already so fragmented, she argues, that it makes no sense to add another division setting women against everyone else; this is a time for everyone’s freedoms, not women’s in particular"
Prostate cancer diagnosis raises risk of suicide - "Being diagnosed with prostate cancer roughly doubles the risk of suicide or death from a heart attack"
Obama Joker vs. Bush Joker: "The Socialist Joker" Inflames the Left - "
In 2004 the very same L.A. Weekly ran this picture depicting President George W. Bush as Dracula, his mouth dripping with the blood of innocents from around the world... just 13 months ago, Vanity Fair depicted Bush as none other than, voila, the Joker! With no chorus of complaints from the Left!... Notably, these caricatures of Bush appeared neither on solitary highway stanchions nor on the walls of buildings in vacant lots, but rather in major publications of the political and social Left. This is to say nothing of the many published cartoons that routinely depicted Bush as a primate. One September 2007 Huffington Post story, in fact, actually bore the title, “New Scientific Study Reveals Bush Is a Chimp.” What would be the Left’s reaction if a conservative were to make a similar assertion about Obama? Bush was also commonly caricatured by the Left as Adolph Hitler"
Ohio University Students Hit ‘Racist’ Halloween Costumes - "Each poster in the series shows an Ohio University student of a different ethnicity holding a photograph of an offensive costume. An Asian girl holds an image of someone dressed up as a geisha. A Mexican boy holds a photo of someone in a sombrero, colorful poncho and exaggerated mustache riding a stuffed donkey. Other images show a terrorist costume, a Native American costume and a gangster."
One commenter: "ANY Halloween costume is offensive to some group. How about discourtesy to not-so-sexy-nurses? Or being disrespectful to the dead? Halloween itself is offensive to many, as well as such celebrations as Christmas (because not everyone is Christian in North America). Shall we ban these holidays altogether? No more Christmas tree on Times Square?!! Down with Easter eggs and bunnies in shop windows?" Naturally they just delete comments disagreeing with them.
Is Justice Sonia Sotomayor, praised as an example of "ingenious stereotype-free costumes", then problematic if the person is not Hispanic? Is it racist for non-whites to dress up as medieval knights? Again the ghettoisation of minority cultures in the crusade to stir up grievances just hurts minorities
South Korea Embraces the Talmud - "Close to 50 million people live in South Korea, and almost everyone is taught the Talmud at home by their parents. "We tried to understand why the Jews are geniuses, and we came to the conclusion that we think it is because they study the Talmud," said the Korean ambassador to Israel, Young Sam Ma"
Marginalization among the marginalized: gay men's anti-effeminacy attitudes. - "A great number of gay men exhibit gender nonconformity during childhood; most, however, "defeminize" during adolescence, possibly in response to stigmatization and society's gender-role prescription. Only a relatively small percentage of gay men continue to be gender-nonconforming in their adulthood, often at a price, as they also tend to have lower psychological well-being. Although gay culture historically appreciated camp and drag, which subvert the gender-based power hierarchy and celebrate gender nonconformity, anti-effeminacy prejudice is widespread among gay men. Ironically, gender-nonconforming gay men may suffer from discrimination not only from society at large, but from other gay men, who are most likely to have experienced stigmatization and may have been effeminate earlier in their lives. Drawing from anecdotes and findings from various sources, this article suggests that beyond many gay men's erotic preference for masculinity lies contempt and hostility toward effeminacy and effeminate men on sociopolitical and personal levels"
Focusing on anti-gay discrimination by non-gays elides over real problems Group rights are problematic whenever the group is diverse and not homogenous (i.e. always).
both sexes talk longer with women - "Smorda and Licoppe (2000)’s finding that both females and males talk significantly longer when they call females is consistent with psychological tests of implicit gender preferences... Scholars who assert that “men are culturally valued more than women” (whatever that means) see gender preferences as a social anomaly"
Why women apologize more than men: gender differences in thresholds for perceiving offensive behavior. - "Women reported offering more apologies than men, but they also reported committing more offenses. There was no gender difference in the proportion of offenses that prompted apologies. This finding suggests that men apologize less frequently than women because they have a higher threshold for what constitutes offensive behavior"
Addendum: A corollary - women are more petty than men (keywords: women are pettier than men)
Indo Chinese Food ~ Chicken Manchurian
I should try this
Sudanese Preacher Sheik Muhammad Al-Amin Ismail Accuses Shiites of Distributing Anti-Sunni Toy Guns - "I've brought you an example [of toys manufactured by Shiites]. We all hope that the brothers who supervise these products, and their import and export, will ban products such as these. Holds up a toy pistol... Shoots the pistol, which emits shooting sounds and a metallic voice: "Go, go, go. Pull over. Save the hostages." It says: "Shoot 'Aisha" [the Prophet Muhammad's wife]. This is for children. "Shoot 'Aisha."
You don't need Westerners to persecute Muslims - they are quite good at doing it to each other already
Attitudes and the Implicit Association Test - "Three studies examined the relationship between the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. K. Schwartz, 1998) and explicit attitudes. In the 1st and all subsequent studies, the lack of any correlation between the IAT and explicitly measured attitudes supports the view that the IAT is independent from explicit attitudes. Study 2 examined the relationships among the IAT, explicit attitudes, and behavior and found that the explicit attitudes predicted behavior but the IAT did not. Finally, in Study 3 it was found that the IAT was affected by exposing participants to new associations between attitude objects, whereas the explicit attitudes remained unchanged. Taken together, these results support an environmental association interpretation of the IAT in which IAT scores reflect the associations a person has been exposed to in his or her environment rather than the extent to which the person endorses those evaluative associations."
Another study provocatively titled "Would Jesse Jackson 'Fail' the Implicit Association Test?" comments that "the patterns of judgment deemed to be indicative of prejudice pass tests deemed to be diagnostic of rational behavior" (which I think means "stereotypes persist and endure because they are often true") and yet another critiques the I, A and T. I always knew that there was something wrong with the IAT, and the grievance industry is just abusing it for its own ends. Finally, this is evidence that using it to witchhunt prejudice is barking up the wrong tree!
Addendum: Does the Implicit Association Test (IAT) Really Measure Racial Prejudice? Probably Not.
Algérie : vote d'une loi accusée de limiter la représentativité féminine - "Le chiffre initial de 30% de femmes était conforme à la convention des Nations unies sur l’élimination des discriminations envers les femmes. Mais le nouveau texte a opté pour une seconde option : un taux de représentativité des femmes variable selon les circonscriptions. Le taux est ainsi de 20% pour les wilayas (préfecture) ayant quatre sièges à l’Assemblée nationale, 30% pour plus de 5 sièges, 35% pour 14 sièges et plus, et enfin 40% pour plus de 32 sièges. La communauté algérienne à l'étranger a, quant à elle, droit à un pourcentage de 50%. Au total, la nouvelle loi instaure un taux de 20% pour 14 des 48 wilayas que compte l’Algérie."
Un homme, une voix, une fois !
Post ID: 5003977275066199145
Monday, November 07, 2011
Great phrase to add to your contracts
"tocě da iže to por(e)če klъni i bo(gъ) i 12 a(posto)la i 4 eva(n)g'(e)listi i s(ve)taě luciě am(e)nъ"
("Whoever denies this, let him be cursed by God and the twelve apostles and the four evangelists and Saint Lucia. Amen")
Source: Baška tablet
("Whoever denies this, let him be cursed by God and the twelve apostles and the four evangelists and Saint Lucia. Amen")
Source: Baška tablet
Post ID: 7520793736181604348
Observations - 7th November 2011
"The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men." - George Eliot
***
Talk of respecting heritage by ghettoising historical cultural artefacts in their country of discovery (note the distinction between this and their "home" country) is a cynical attempt to cash in politically and monetarily from said artefacts. For example, take Egyptian Mummies. If Respect was really the most important factor here, you wouldn't even be excavating them and their grave goods, much less putting them on display (and almost always charging an admission fee). This is in addition to the other issues of cultural continuity (what do modern-day Turks have in common with Christian Byzantines or Classical Athenians?), genetic continuity (the Ainu were driven out of most of Japan, so the modern Japanese connection to a Ainu "heritage" is tenuous at best) and more. What we are really "respecting" is contemporary delusions and pretensions about ancestry and cultural continuity.
When people say you should be more open-minded, they mean you should agree with them - and then they proceed to refuse to listen to you.
Saving the planet is great, but first you need to save yourself.
Imaginary pound wise, penny foolish - is still foolish.
21st century emails: calling someone to send him an email.
Amused that someone told me a lot of HR practitioners he spoke to don't think much of SMU graduates.
I have grudging respect for spammers who mark their emails as "low priority".
Wondering if those who bash stereotyping take medical screening seriously.
It's better to be evil than good. Do you know how hard white robes are to maintain?
Amused teachers are a significant percentage of drug OD patients
"Karl Marx, a man who was so convinced of his rightness, and so buried in his books in the British Library, that he failed to observe the world around him. He did not bother to visit a single British factory. He refused to exchange a word with the intellectual titans of the time, including Charles Darwin and George Eliot, both of whom lived just a few miles from his front door. He ignored overwhelming statistical evidence that the working class’s share of the nation’s wealth was increasing."
[On Occupy Whatever] "you dont like the gap between rich and poor, well go and get a job then you are not getting any richer by being on the dole. if you dont like the 1% then dont use their services, go and get an ethical job, bank with the Bendigo bank and not one of the four big banks, dont buy anything from the big mutlinationals, get rid of your car and get a bike. vote with your feet not some pointless camping exercise."
RT: @fakeyarratrams: #occupymelb lobby blocking trams in the city. Don't they realise the 1% don't catch trams? Stop delaying the 99% heading home. #YarraTrams
RT: EverywhereTrip: Steve Jobs probably did more to make people happy than most religions in the world
Maybe the bad reaction to the iPhone 4S was what finally did him in
[On Jobs's passing] "My 4 year old MacBook pro died this morning. It must have been his last horcrux : ("
RT @clarissejang: "You are what you eat"..."I need to eat a skinny person"
RT: @markleggett: As the dawn sun glistens on your sweaty body, you awaken in a bed filled with coarse hairs. You are either a werewolf or an Italian.
RT @TheeBuddha The most unforgettable evenings are the ones you can't remember the next morning.
RT @edchng if you replace "penis" with "power" in everything Freud says, he becomes Foucault
RT: @mrbrown: "The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it is sometimes impossible to determine whether or not they are genuine." —Abraham Lincoln
"why do the dead deserve any special respect? If I did not respect someone when he was alive, I am certainly not going to respect him when he's dead."
***
Talk of respecting heritage by ghettoising historical cultural artefacts in their country of discovery (note the distinction between this and their "home" country) is a cynical attempt to cash in politically and monetarily from said artefacts. For example, take Egyptian Mummies. If Respect was really the most important factor here, you wouldn't even be excavating them and their grave goods, much less putting them on display (and almost always charging an admission fee). This is in addition to the other issues of cultural continuity (what do modern-day Turks have in common with Christian Byzantines or Classical Athenians?), genetic continuity (the Ainu were driven out of most of Japan, so the modern Japanese connection to a Ainu "heritage" is tenuous at best) and more. What we are really "respecting" is contemporary delusions and pretensions about ancestry and cultural continuity.
When people say you should be more open-minded, they mean you should agree with them - and then they proceed to refuse to listen to you.
Saving the planet is great, but first you need to save yourself.
Imaginary pound wise, penny foolish - is still foolish.
21st century emails: calling someone to send him an email.
Amused that someone told me a lot of HR practitioners he spoke to don't think much of SMU graduates.
I have grudging respect for spammers who mark their emails as "low priority".
Wondering if those who bash stereotyping take medical screening seriously.
It's better to be evil than good. Do you know how hard white robes are to maintain?
Amused teachers are a significant percentage of drug OD patients
"Karl Marx, a man who was so convinced of his rightness, and so buried in his books in the British Library, that he failed to observe the world around him. He did not bother to visit a single British factory. He refused to exchange a word with the intellectual titans of the time, including Charles Darwin and George Eliot, both of whom lived just a few miles from his front door. He ignored overwhelming statistical evidence that the working class’s share of the nation’s wealth was increasing."
[On Occupy Whatever] "you dont like the gap between rich and poor, well go and get a job then you are not getting any richer by being on the dole. if you dont like the 1% then dont use their services, go and get an ethical job, bank with the Bendigo bank and not one of the four big banks, dont buy anything from the big mutlinationals, get rid of your car and get a bike. vote with your feet not some pointless camping exercise."
RT: @fakeyarratrams: #occupymelb lobby blocking trams in the city. Don't they realise the 1% don't catch trams? Stop delaying the 99% heading home. #YarraTrams
RT: EverywhereTrip: Steve Jobs probably did more to make people happy than most religions in the world
Maybe the bad reaction to the iPhone 4S was what finally did him in
[On Jobs's passing] "My 4 year old MacBook pro died this morning. It must have been his last horcrux : ("
RT @clarissejang: "You are what you eat"..."I need to eat a skinny person"
RT: @markleggett: As the dawn sun glistens on your sweaty body, you awaken in a bed filled with coarse hairs. You are either a werewolf or an Italian.
RT @TheeBuddha The most unforgettable evenings are the ones you can't remember the next morning.
RT @edchng if you replace "penis" with "power" in everything Freud says, he becomes Foucault
RT: @mrbrown: "The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it is sometimes impossible to determine whether or not they are genuine." —Abraham Lincoln
"why do the dead deserve any special respect? If I did not respect someone when he was alive, I am certainly not going to respect him when he's dead."
Post ID: 6258494991425331135
Sunday, November 06, 2011
France/Spain 2011 - Day 7, Part 3 - Zaragoza: Aljafería Palace
"What a pity, when Christopher Colombus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it." - Margot Asquith
***
France/Spain 2011
Day 7 - 23rd March - Zaragoza: Aljafería Palace (Part 3)
"Paradise on Earth: The Golden Room"
Brackets
Decorative panel and arch fragments
Heraldic devices
Detail of one
Detail of another
Sheath of arrows: Device of Isabella I of Castille
Blazon of the Catholic Kings
Then there was a room from which we could view the roof beams of the hall below (on which were painted the heraldic devices previously displayed). At this point I discovered that my camera had no Manual Focus.
Beams
You will notice a lot of duplicates in this day's pictures, but I've already deleted a few
"Balcony of the Shields". This was presumably the room I was looking at the devices on the beams from.
Model of the Palace
I then got into the hall
This photo is orphaned. Or there wasn't a plaque in the room.
For some reason only the ceilings were conserved in most of the rooms.
Room of Pedro IV
Portal
Throne Room
Room of St Isabella
Boards of Lost Steps (?)
Gallery
Staircase (roof of)
Staircase
Palace from outside
Calle Predicadores
***
France/Spain 2011
Day 7 - 23rd March - Zaragoza: Aljafería Palace (Part 3)
"Paradise on Earth: The Golden Room"
Brackets
Decorative panel and arch fragments
Heraldic devices
Detail of one
Detail of another
Sheath of arrows: Device of Isabella I of Castille
Blazon of the Catholic Kings
Then there was a room from which we could view the roof beams of the hall below (on which were painted the heraldic devices previously displayed). At this point I discovered that my camera had no Manual Focus.
Beams
You will notice a lot of duplicates in this day's pictures, but I've already deleted a few
"Balcony of the Shields". This was presumably the room I was looking at the devices on the beams from.
Model of the Palace
I then got into the hall
This photo is orphaned. Or there wasn't a plaque in the room.
For some reason only the ceilings were conserved in most of the rooms.
Room of Pedro IV
Portal
Throne Room
Room of St Isabella
Boards of Lost Steps (?)
Gallery
Staircase (roof of)
Staircase
Palace from outside
Calle Predicadores
Post ID: 4982352407367210937
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