Genes influence reading skills

Psychology research:

Genetics can play a bigger role in determining a child's reading ability than teaching, an Australian researcher says.

An international study showed some children were born with "an unfortunate deal of the genetic deck" when it comes to reading skills, said study co-author Brian Byrne, professor of psychology at the University of New England in northern NSW.

No "magic bullet" of encouragement and tutoring would fully improve their reading abilities, he said.

Published in the latest issue of the British-based Journal of Research in Reading, the study showed the influence of parents reading to their children diminished significantly a year or so after they started school. ...

The research examined more than 600 pairs of identical and non-identical twins in Australia, the United States, Norway and Sweden from different racial and socio-economic backgrounds.

Byrne said bed-time stories early in a child's life, encouragement to read and remedial teaching would never totally make up for a child's genetic "bad deal".

I don't think that bed-time stories are really intended to make up for a genetic bad deal.

Sex is what women want

The New York Daily News reports:

Gone are the times when women became starry eyed if their lovers gifted them flowers, emotional cards or chocolates on Valentine's Day. A new poll suggests that ladies today prefer to move straight to the bedroom and forgo all the nuances of a mushy courtship.

More than 52 percent of American women said they wanted to have sex on the most romantic day of the year, according to a survey sponsered by a condom company.

While 45 percent were looking for a greeting card, 41 percent were hoping for flowers and a surprisingly low 30 percentcounting on chocolates. ...

The craving for some Valentine's Day action was highest among younger women, with 76 percent of those 18 to 34 saying they wanted sex, compared with just 24 percent of those older than 55, according to the poll, paid for by LifeStyles condoms.

We need more research done by condom makers.

Boys dominate big kiddie movies

AP reports:

LOS ANGELES - Male characters outnumbered females 3-to-1 overall in top-grossing G-rated films from 1990 to 2004, according to a study whose sponsors say the disparity diminishes the importance of women in children's eyes.

"We're showing kids a world that's very scantly populated with women and female characters," said actress Geena Davis, founder of See Jane, a program of the advocacy group Dads & Daughters that encourages balanced gender representation in entertainment for children.

John sarcastically suggests that "Dads & Daughters" may be a feminist group in disguise.

He might be right. A group called Dads & Daughters should have a dad as a spokesman, not a Hollywood actress. My daughters find plenty of movies for children with female role models. For example, they like movies like Cinderella, Shirley Temple movies, The Wizard of Oz, and Eloise at Christmastime. The leading child actor is Hollywood today is a girl named Dakota Fanning.

"It's important for what kids watch that as far as possible, they see the real world reflected, to see men and women, boys and girls, sharing the space," said Davis, co-star of the female-empowerment film "Thelma & Louise" and star of TV's "Commander in Chief" in which she plays the U.S. president. "They should see female characters taking up half the planet, which we do."

There are several Geena Davis movies that I'd recommend, but not those. The female empowerment in Thelma & Louise is murder and suicide, and is not a good example for my kids. I watched a couple of episodes of Davis's TV show, and she seemed like a lousy president to me. She was unable to control her own staff, and at the same time, she was recklessly committing to ill-considered overseas military adventures.

Joe Kelly, co-founder of Dads & Daughters, said as much as he loves "Toy Story," the study made him think about the movie differently. The movie has a positive message about two characters -- Tom Hanks' Woody and Tim Allen's Buzz Lightyear -- overcoming their differences and working together, but it does have a flaw, Kelly said.

Toy Story was obviously created to appeal to both boys and girls. The main (human) character is a boy who plays with dolls, and the dolls spring to life when no one is watching. It seemed like a clever compromise to me. If the movie had been about a girl who plays with dolls, then it would have immediately lost 50% of the market.

Koran allows cartoons

Amir Taheri writes in a WSJ op-ed:

There is no Quranic injunction against images, whether of Muhammad or anyone else. When it spread into the Levant, Islam came into contact with a version of Christianity that was militantly iconoclastic. ... and the claim that a ban on images is "an absolute principle of Islam" is purely political.

The claim that the ban on depicting Muhammad and other prophets is an absolute principle of Islam is also refuted by history. Many portraits of Muhammad have been drawn by Muslim artists, often commissioned by Muslim rulers. ...

The truth is that Islam has always had a sense of humor and has never called for chopping heads as the answer to satirists. Muhammad himself pardoned a famous Meccan poet who had lampooned him for more than a decade.

I believe that most of the news stories are incorrect when they try to describe the motives of the Mohammedan cartoon protesters. They shouldn't try to read minds, and certainly not Mohammedan minds.

Low-fat diet is worthless

Gina Kolata writes:

The largest study ever to ask whether a low-fat diet reduces the risk of getting cancer or heart disease has found that the diet has no effect. ... those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever they pleased, researchers are reporting today. ...

"These studies are revolutionary," said Dr. Jules Hirsch, physician in chief emeritus at Rockefeller University in New York City, who has spent a lifetime studying the effects of diets on weight and health. "They should put a stop to this era of thinking that we have all the information we need to change the whole national diet and make everybody healthy." ...

For decades, many scientists have said, and many members of the public have believed, that what people eat -- the composition of the diet -- determines how likely they are to get a chronic disease. But that has been hard to prove. Studies of dietary fiber and colon cancer failed to find that fiber was protective, and studies of vitamins thought to protect against cancer failed to show an effect.

Supposed experts have been telling us for years that eating fat was bad, and that eater fiber is good, for various reasons. In fact, there is very little scientific evidence that any American diet is better than any other.

Cult of political correctness

Peter A. Lawrence wrote an essay on Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science, but it was ideologically unacceptable:

An academic row has erupted after one of the world's leading scientific journals refused to publish an article which claims that men and women think differently. ...

In his paper, Mr Lawrence questioned why, when 60 per cent of biology students are female, only 10 per go on to become professors. ...

But Mr Lawrence dismissed "the cult of political correctness" that insists men and women are "equivalent, identical even" and argued that "men and women are born different".

The journal considered the article for seven months and, after making a number of changes, gave Mr Lawrence a publication date, proofs and a chance to order reprints.

But at the last minute he received an e-mail from Donald Kennedy, the editor-in-chief, in which he said that the journal was not going to publish the article.

The piece "did not, at least for us, lead to a clear strategy about how to deal with the gender issue," said Kennedy. ...

Science is reeling from having published two papers that contained the most notorious fraud of recent years, Prof Hwang Woo-Suk's human embryonic stem cell research.

Over two years ago, the journal was also criticised for trying to influence a Congressional debate by publishing a widely reported paper linking the drug ecstasy to brain damage, which was subsequently retracted.

Actually, the article does give suggestions for how to deal with the "gender issue". He says:

Some have a dream that, one fine day, there will be equal numbers of men and women in all jobs, including those in scientific research. But I think this dream is Utopian; it assumes that if all doors were opened and all discrimination ended, the different sexes would be professionally indistinguishable. The dream is sustained by a cult of political correctness that ignores the facts of life -- and thrives only because the human mind likes to bury experience as it builds beliefs. Here I will argue, as others have many times before, that men and women are born different. ...

I have argued that reducing the premium we give to aggression would, in several different ways, lead to more women in science and also to better science. Even so, in this Utopia, I think that far less than 50% of top physicists would be women (and far less than 50% of top professors of literature would be men). But I don't think that would matter -- we would be making better use of the diverse qualities of people. Both women and men might accept that although there is much overlap in the two populations, we are constitutionally different -- a diversity we should be able to celebrate and discuss openly. Both women and men should be leading such discussions with pride.

What the editors don't like is his statement that the "dream is Utopian". Martin Luther King had a dream, and no one likes to be told that his utopian dream is impossible.

Penetrative intercourse only

UK news:

New Scientist magazine reports that Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley, found having sex can help keep stress at bay.

However, only penetrative intercourse did the trick - other forms of sex had no impact on stress levels at all. ...

Dr Brody found that the effect remained even after taking differences in personality and other health-related factors into account.

He told the BBC News website it was possible the calming effect was linked to the stimulation of a wide variety of nerves which takes place during heterosexual intercourse, but not other forms of sex. ...

Professor Brody said it made sense in evolutionary terms for standard heterosexual sexual intercourse to be associated with a wide range of positive effects on behaviour.

He said: "A growing body of research shows that it is specifically intercourse, and not other sexual behaviours, whether alone or with a partner, that is associated with a broad range of psychological and physiological benefits.

I'd be skeptical, like "Dr Peter Bull", but apparently there are other studies with similar results.

Detecting liars

NY Times Magazine says:

Most people think they're good at spotting liars, but studies show otherwise. A very small minority of people, probably fewer than 5 percent, seem to have some innate ability to sniff out deception with accuracy. But in general, even professional lie-catchers, like judges and customs officials, perform, when tested, at a level not much better than chance. In other words, even the experts would have been right almost as often if they had just flipped a coin.

The article has much more about the science of lie detection.

This is yet another example of how most people suffer from delusions that they can read other peoples' minds. They cannot.

Convicted and exonerated

Here is some data on Americans who are falsely convicted. No one who has been executed in recent decades was later shown to be innocent. Joshua Marquis says:

Only 14 Americans who were once on death row have been exonerated by DNA evidence alone. ... In the Winter 2005 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, a group led by Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan, published an exhaustive study of exonerations around the country from 1989 to 2003 in cases ranging from robbery to capital murder. They were able to document only 340 inmates who were eventually freed. (They counted cases where defendants were retried after an initial conviction and subsequently found not guilty as "exonerations.")

This is an extremely small rate of exonerations, and the rate is likely to go down in the future. Only in the last 10 years have DNA exonerations been possible because the DNA evidence was not available at trial.

Common sense would indicate that many more innocent people are convicted. Human beings are fallible. Judges, juries, prosecutors, cops, and others have various biases. But there is no hard data showing that a significant number of people are falsely convicted.

Embassies burn in cartoon protest

BBC news:

Syrians have set fire to the Norwegian and Danish embassies in Damascus to protest at the publication of newspaper cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Protesters stormed the Danish site amid chants of "God is great", before moving on to attack the Norwegian mission.

This just confirms the cartoons, and gives more evidence that there is a Mohammedan jihad against the civilized world.

Some people say that we should be tolerant of these Mohammedans, because any criticism risks alienating the moderate moslems who might be friendly to American values. I disagree. Our society depends on being able to publish political cartoons without fear of violence. If there are moderate moslems who agree, then I hope that they will distance themselves from the rioters.

George writes:

What if a newspaper made fun of Jesus? You act like Islam is the only source of violence, but Christianity burned some witches at the stake in the Middle Ages.

These analogies are silly. Making fun of Jesus is far more blasphemous than making fun of Muhammad, because Christians believe that Jesus was God. And yet NBC just aired a TV series called The Book Of Daniel that made fun of Jesus. No one rioted. They just didn't watch it, and the show was cancelled.

This article claims that about 40k European witches were burned between 1400 and 1800. I don't know about that, but no Christians today endorse that. Meanwhile, check out TheReligionOfPeace.com for facts about the Mohammedan Jihad today.

There are also some fake cartoons that the Mohammedans are circulating.

Mohammedan blasphemy

NY Times story:

Many Muslims consider it blasphemy to print any image of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, let alone a cartoon that ridicules him.

I doubt that. If it is blasphemy, then how would the muslims even know what Muhammad looked like?

It may be blasphemy to worship Muhammad as a god, but not to ridicule him.

Brown v Yana

California Family law says:

7501. (a) A parent entitled to the custody of a child has a right to change the residence of the child, subject to the power of the court to restrain a removal that would prejudice the rights or welfare of the child.
(b) It is the intent of the Legislature to affirm the decision in In re Marriage of Burgess (1996) 13 Cal.4th 25, and to declare that ruling to be the public policy and law of this state.

I thought that this meant that a parent who shares legal custody is subject to a court hearing before moving the child away from the other parent. But the California supreme court just ruled in Brown v Yana:

Thus, while sections 3006 and 3007 recognize the general right of a parent with sole custody to supervise and make decisions regarding a child's residence and education, section 7501, fairly read, contemplates that even a parent with sole legal and sole physical custody may be restrained from changing a child's residence, if a court determines the change would be detrimental to the child's rights or welfare.
Not only does section 7501 undermine any notion of a custodial parent's absolute right to relocate with a child, but so does the lack of any California decision supporting such a proposition.

Furthermore, it ruled that the noncustodial parent has no right to a hearing.

So the parents have no rights in the matter. In this case, the boy ultimately got his way by refusing to board the plane!

NYC banning whole milk

NY news:

But children today are fat, or at least too many of them are, and to cut the risks of obesity, diabetes and other health problems, New York City -- the nation's largest school district -- has decided to cut whole milk from the menu. ...

One percent and skim milk, though historically less popular, will still be served, and, to the great relief of many young palates, chocolate skim milk will remain an option in most schools, ...

This is more proof that a lot of people have kooky ideas about nutrition. My local school only serves 1% milk. Claiming that chocolate skim milk is healthier for kids than whole milk is a little strange.

Addicted to oil

John writes:

SOTU headline: Bush says Americans are "addicted to oil" -- which is like saying Americans are addicted to economic growth. (transcipt)

On the one hand Bush takes credit for promoting economic growth. OTOH, he disparages oil consumption, which is the inevitable byproduct of that growth.

Complaining that we import oil from "unstable parts of the world," Bush set a goal by 2025 of replacing 75 percent of U.S. oil imports from the Middle East.

This is strange in a speech that also warned against the "false comfort of isolationism" ("In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting, yet it ends in danger and decline")

Wouldn't it be "isolationism and protectionism" to replace cheaper imported oil with higher-priced domestic energy? Of course it is.

If the U.S. reduced or even eliminated oil imports from the Middle East, that would accomplish nothing so long as our trading partners (Europe, Japan and China) continued to buy their oil from the Middle East, as they surely would.

Can anyone explain this incoherent nonsense about oil, coming from Bush and Cheney who supposedly represent the oil industry?

Maybe he wants to distance himself from the oil industry, or to promote nuclear power.

Federal child support

Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks write:

Federal Child Support Enforcement Cuts Will Hurt Bureaucrats, not Children

Democrats, women's advocates, the National Governors Association, and child support enforcement officials are sounding the alarm over proposed cuts in the federal funds that subsidize states' child support enforcement efforts. The cuts, which recently passed the House, will reduce federal reimbursement from 66% of the states? costs to 50% over five years.

It would help children even more if the federal reimbursements were cut to zero. Here is another gripe:

Any GOP representative who votes against restoring the funds for child support enforcement should be attacked by his 2006 challenger as "anti-family" and someone who protects "deadbeat dads."

The federal program creates monetary incentives for busting up families, denying father visitation, and paternity fraud. It is not really even correct to call it child support enforcement because it does not enforce any money to be spent on supporting children. It only enforces mother (and father) support, and welfare agency reimbursement.

Comparing pilots to stewardesses

Toronto news:

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled Tuesday that Air Canada's flight attendants can compare their pay with that of pilots and ground crews to determine if they are being discriminated against because of gender.

The top court said it is fair to make the comparison, because the flight attendants, pilots and ground crews all work for the same organization in the same business.

Air Canada had argued that each of the groups is covered under a different collective agreement, so a comparison would not be valid. The top court rejected that view.

The next time you hear that men make more than women, remember that they have to compare airline pilots to stewardesses to get that conclusion.

Cartoons upset Mohammedans

Canada reports from Gaza:

Masked gunmen stormed an office used by the European Union in Gaza City on Monday to protest cartoons published in Denmark and Norway.

Five men entered the building and closed down the office while 10 men stood watch outside.

One of the men said they were protesting the caricatures, one showing the Prophet Muhammad wearing a turban shaped as a bomb with a burning fuse.

I mentioned the cartoons below.

This picture shows Mohammedans burning a Danish flag. There are more pictures here.

More news:

DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iraqi militant group called on Monday for attacks against Danish and Norwegian targets over satirical cartoons of Islam's Prophet Mohammad, saying a boycott of goods was not enough, according to an Internet statement.

"Boycotting cheese and dairy products alone is a flimsy stance that fits a weak nation that cannot defend its prophet ... They started this and they have to shoulder the responsibilities," said the statement attributed to the Mujahideen Army.

It called on its fighters to "hit whatever targets possible belonging to these two countries and other (countries) that follow their steps".

Here is the Hamas Charter.

Oppenheimer the dark angel

Rober Larue writes:

To the Editor:
James Horgan makes reference to Robert Oppenheimer as "the dark angel of nuclear physics." One wonders if Oppenheimer deserves that appellation, and if it is not more apt regarding Edward Teller. Oppenheimer, once the genie was out of the bottle, struggled to control atomic power rather than expand it, and he was martyred for his efforts.

Teller, on the other hand, sought tirelessly to increase nuclear destructive capability and contributed, Judas-like, to Oppenheimer's destruction. It's not surprising that Stanley Kubrick chose Teller, not Oppenheimer, as the model for Dr. Strangelove, as a recent biography of Teller has noted.

No, Strangelove appears to be mostly based on Herman Kahn. Oppenheimer was a Commie, and he only opposed nukes when used to defend ourselves from the Commies. Teller was a great and loyal American.

Comparing public and private schools

I am still trying to make sense out of this study:

A study finds that U.S. public school students do as well on math tests as those in private schools when student backgrounds are taken into account.

Christopher Lubianski and Sarah Theule Lubianski, of the University of Illinois used data from the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, comparing the scores of 340,000 students in 13,000 schools, the New York Times reported. The number of students taking the test increased tenfold that year.

The Lubianskis used statistical techniques to adjust scores for family income and school and home circumstances. They found that the average raw scores of Catholic school fourth-graders were 14.3 points higher than public school students and 3.4 points lower when adjusted.

On this scale, an academic year is about 10 points.

What I don't get is how they adjusted for school circumstances. They were supposed to be measuring differences in school circumstances, not concealing them. I cannot find the paper online.

Sex and sense of humor

Nature reports:

Bressler suspected that men and women do, in fact, both value a sense of humour in a mate, but that they might be looking for slightly different things: women valuing an ability to be funny and men valuing an ability to see the joke.

In a second study, Bressler and his colleagues asked nearly 130 students to imagine two people of the opposite sex. One fictional character was funny; the other appreciated another person's humour. The team then asked each student which they would choose for a relationship.

Women generally preferred men who were funny, while men favoured a woman who thought he was funny.

Shafting boys

Ilana Mercer writes:

Evidence abounds that boys thrive in the more disciplined, structured learning environment. America's loosey-goosey schools, however, shun discipline and moral instruction. Boys are also biologically predisposed to competition. But in the progressive school, cooperative experiences and groupthink are preferred to individual achievement.

And girls are favored over boys.

When boys bubble over with unbridled testosterone, instead of challenging, disciplining and harnessing their energies, as teachers once did, they are emasculated or medicated. The former means being made over in the image of woman; the latter entails being diagnosed as "learning disabled" and drugged with Ritalin. It is a consequence of the demonization of male biopsychology.

The school is a microcosm of society. Both have been thoroughly feminized.

France does not have free speech

French news:

Stating that "homosexual behaviour endangers the survival of humanity" and that "heterosexuality is morally superior to homosexuality" can cost you dearly in France. Exactly these opinions, expressed by the French politician Christian Vanneste last year, led to him being sentenced on Tuesday to payment of a heavy fine.

A court in Lille ... ruled that Mr Vanneste has to pay a fine of 3,000 euro plus 3,000 euro in damages to each of the three gay organisations that had taken him to court.

A major goal of the gay rights movement is to suppress criticism.

Boys and girls are harassed

CNN reports:

Men are more likely to harass than women, but women and men are equally likely to be harassed on U.S. campuses, according to a report by the American Association of University Women.

The girls complain about it more.

Schoolboy argues system is favoring girls

Boston Globe news:

Girls are outperforming boys because the school system favors them, said Anglin, who has filed a federal civil rights complaint contending that his school discriminates against boys.

Among Anglin's allegations: Girls face fewer restrictions from teachers, like being able to wander the hallways without passes, and girls are rewarded for abiding by the rules, while boys' more rebellious ways are punished. ...

Of the 22 students in her honors Spanish class, only one is a boy, said [Kelli] Little, a senior. She also said that teachers rarely ask her for a hall pass if she is not in class, while they routinely question boys walking behind her.

As for assignments, she said, one teacher expects students to type up class notes and decorate their notebooks with glitter and feathers.

''You can't expect a boy to buy pink paper and frills to decorate their notebooks," Little said. ...

While some of Anglin's concerns appear to be supported by school statistics and anecdotal evidence, school officials say some of the solutions that he offers are far-fetched.

For example, he proposes that the high school give students credit for playing sports, not just for art and drama courses. He also urges that students be allowed to take classes on a pass/fail basis to encourage more boys to enroll in advanced classes without risking their grade point average. He also wants the school to abolish its community service requirement, saying it's another burden that will just set off resistance from boys, who may skip it and fail to graduate as a result.

I am sure that his complaint will be ignored, but he does have a point. The schools favor girls in a lot of ways.

Genetic differences help explain cigarette addiction

NewScientist reports:

Two new studies of smokers have yielded new insight into a gene linked to cigarette addiction. The findings could lead to more personalised -- and ultimately more effective -- treatments that help people to quit smoking.

Funny, I don't hear anyone demanding smokers rights because smoking is innate, and not a choice.

School boys can wear skirts

Newark NJ news:

The American Civil Liberties Union says the school district in Bergen County has decided that Michael Coviello can wear skirts to class. The 17-year-old began wearing skirts to protest a district ban on shorts at school between October and April. ...

The state's ACLU chapter told the school superintendent that all students -- not just girls -- are entitled to wear skirts.

The ACLU should not be dictating dress codes.

British culture of secrecy

British news:

Girls under 16 can have abortions without their parents' knowledge, a judge ruled yesterday.

Sue Axon, 51, a divorced, single parent of five children from Wythenshawe, Manchester, lost a High Court case challenging Government guidelines that allow health professionals to give sexual health advice to under-16s without parental consent.

In a case which had wide implications, Mrs Axon said the guidance was "undermining" family life by fostering a "culture of secrecy".

Young schoolgirls also get condoms and morning-after pills without their parents' knowledge or consent.

Sexual activity required

Florida news:

University of Florida employees have to pledge that they're having sex with their domestic partners before qualifying for benefits under a new health care plan at the university. ...

In addition to declaring joint financial obligations, prospective enrollees must "have been in a non-platonic relationship for the preceding 12 months," according to the affidavit.

Marylou Behnke, a UF senator, told Cavanaugh she found the requirement "offensive."

As a member of the Senate, representing faculty in UF's College of Medicine, Behnke said she was compelled to learn more about UF's plan. She said she was taken aback to find that employees would be required to swear to prior sexual activity, a standard not applied to married couples covered by UF's primary health care plan. ...

Confidentiality is promised to UF employees enrolled in any health care plan, but Behnke said she had concerns about whether the affidavit might lead to discrimination if it ended up in the wrong hands. Pledging an active homosexual relationship, as the affidavit requires for gay couples, could potentially bar an individual from participation in organizations like the Boy Scouts or the military, Behnke said.

There is something very strange about these homosexual couples who want to be treated just like married couples. They want the benefits, but they are embarrassed about what they are doing.

Soy not so healthy

AP health news:

DALLAS - Veggie burgers and tofu might not be so great at warding off heart disease after all.

An American Heart Association committee reviewed a decade of studies on soy's benefits and came up with results that are now casting doubt on the health claim that soy-based foods and supplements significantly lower cholesterol.

The findings could lead the Food and Drug Administration to re-evaluate rules that currently allow companies to tout a cholestorol-lowering benefit on the labels of soy-based food.

I just bought some imitation peanut butter called SoyNut Butter. I had to goto a market with a health food section to find it. It wasn't even shelved with the peanut butter; it was in the other side of the store. I guess that I should be happy that some people mistakenly believe that it is healthy, or I might not have been able to buy it at all.

Gene test and insurance

Diana Abramo writes to the NY Times editor:

Re "Gene Increases Diabetes Risk, Scientists Find" (front page, Jan. 16):

The discovery of a variant gene that predisposes more than a third of the American population to Type 2 diabetes could, its discoverers hope, eventually allow testing for that gene. But this would mean worse health outcomes, not better, because we have a profit-driven health care system.

As your series on diabetes this month stated, insurers often discourage diabetics from enrollment. Tests demonstrating a predisposition to diabetes could result in refusal of coverage, exorbitant rates or exclusions for diabetes and all related complications.

Without a single-payer system with a goal of providing health care rather than profit, exciting advances in genetics will not result in better health care, but in health care denied.

Scientific breakthroughs unmatched by breakthroughs in insurance systems will be of no avail.

This makes no sense. Insurance companies will not cancel a third of their customers just because of a gene test.

If a gene test raises rates for a third of the population, then it should lower rates for the other two thirds. On average, consumers should benefit because insurance companies should not have to be paid as much to assume risk.

There might be some public policy reasons for barring insurance companies from using certain genetic tests, but anything that allows better prediction of disease should make the whole system more efficient.

Defining Mohammedan

Wikipedia defines Mohammedan:

Mohammedan is an archaic term in English for a Muslim that was commonly used in western literature until around the mid-twentieth century. Earlier generations of westerners falsely believed that the followers of Islam worshipped Muhammad, when actually Muslims worship only God (or Allah); Muhammad is regarded as the last prophet. The term is offensive to many Muslims, because of the word's implication that Muhammad is worshipped.

I doubt that this is correct. I can't find any proof that westerners thought that anyone worshipped Muhammad. Eg, this 1910 encyclopedia does not say so.

The word only suggests that a Mohammedan is a follower of Mohammad, and that is correct. There are Mohammedans who prefer other terms, such as moslim or muslim, but I think that is for other reasons. The term Mohammedan is accurate.

Muhammad taught many things, besides religion. I think that the terms moslem, muslim, and Islam were invented for just the religious aspects of his teachings. The term Mohammedan is more correct if one wants to include his other teachings. That is why I continue to use it.

Distinguishing Mohammedans

This Stratfor report distinguishes various Mohammedans:

For starters, it is important to understand that "Islamist" -- not "Islamic" -- is the accurate term to refer to the militants' ideology, which seeks the establishment of a government that implements Islamic law. ... Beyond the moderate mainstream of Islamism are two types of actors -- radical and militant. The former espouse a radical agenda, but do not use violent means. ... there are "jihadists" who they seek to establish an Islamic state by waging a jihad (armed struggle) against the current regime. ... Although not all Wahhabis are jihadists, it would be safe to say that most jihadists are Wahhabi. ... jihadists are also a sub-category within the wider Islamist militant universe.

Unless you are a diplomat, I don't see why these distinctions are useful. It is not clear to me that there are clear differences between these various Mohammedan actors, or that the terminology is accepted.

Animal personalities

Here is a long NY Times story about how octopuses and other animals supposedly have personalities. Psychologists should test out more of their goofy theories on animals.

Naomi Wolf sees Jesus

British news:

Naomi Wolf, one of America's foremost feminist thinkers, has found a spiritual awakening in God after experiencing a "mystical encounter" with Jesus.

Wolf, best known as the author of the Beauty Myth, a groundbreaking 1991 polemic against the cosmetics industry that radicalised a generation of young women, revealed the cause of a hitherto unexplained mid-life crisis that set her on a "spiritual path".

In an interview with the Sunday Herald, Wolf spoke publicly for the first time about her vision. Her comments will spark a theological skirmish in the United States and leave her open to further attacks from other feminist critics.

Wolf admitted that, during a therapy session to treat writer's block, she encountered what she described as a holographic image of Jesus. ...

She also expressed apprehension that her faith would be hijacked by religious groups. "I don't want to be co-opted as the poster child for any religion or any agenda," said Wolf, who was brought up in a liberal Jewish household. "There are a lot of people out there just waiting for some little Jewish feminist to cross over. I don't claim to get where this being fits into the scheme of things but I absolutely believe in divine providence now, absolutely believe God totally cares about every single one of us intimately."

Despite pleas to distance her faith from any religion, her admission to seeing the "child of God" will trigger a theological battle between the American Christian right and the Jewish lobby over the ownership of her soul.

Wolf, a one-time adviser to President Clinton, has been attacked before by the Republican right in 2000 when it was revealed she advised Al Gore to start behaving like an "alpha" male in his presidential campaign. ...

In a series of successful books, Wolf has projected her own experiences into a universal ideology for women.

Her critics, led by Camille Paglia, accuse her of being a lightweight.

No one cares about the ownership of her soul. There are many other feminists who similarly project their own experiences into a universal ideology for women.

Big sex harassment payoff

Missouri news:

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) - A woman who said she was sexually harassed by her supervisor has been awarded $6.8 million in damages.

A Jackson County jury said Kendra Lynn, of Kansas City, should receive $50,000 in actual damages from TNT Logistics North America Inc. and Michael Gill, the woman's former boss. The jury called for $6.75 million in punitive damages in its Jan. 13 verdict.

Lynn said Gill made lewd comments to her about five times in October 2003 and once hit her buttocks with a belt in front of another supervisor. She also claimed she was wrongly fired after filing a sexual harassment complaint, but the jury sided with TNT, which makes car parts.

So I guess that the jury thought that Lynn was properly fired, but still deserves a million dollars for each lewd comment she heard.

Disrespect for belief

Newspaperindex.com:

Louise Arbour - United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights - has appointed two UN experts on racism to carry out a detailed investigation into what Arbour characterizes as a "disrespect for belief."

Has the UN run out of serious complaints? Yes, newspaper cartoonists sometimes show a disrespect for beliefs. I see nothing wrong with these cartoons.

Women feel your pain

Malcolm Ritter says women feel your pain more:

NEW YORK --Bill Clinton said he felt others' pain. But a new brain-scanning study suggests that when guys see a cheater get a mild electric shock, they don't feel his pain much at all. In fact, they rather enjoy it.

In contrast, women's brains showed they do empathize with the cheater's pain and don't get a kick out it.

It's not clear whether this difference in schadenfreude -- enjoyment of another's misfortune -- results from basic biology or sex roles learned during life, researchers say. But it could help explain why men have historically taken charge of punishing criminals and others who violate societal rules, said researcher Dr. Klaas Stephan.

This is yet another difference between men and women.

Not saying sorry

A reader sends this story:

Lynne Truss was lamenting the fact that no one seems to say "I'm sorry" anymore. A school teacher asked her class "What word that ends in R-Y isn't used at home very much and should be used more often?" Finally a puzzled looking kid raised his and and said "Buggery?".

Usually we hear what some people call a non-apology apology. I make my kids say that they are sorry to each other.

Teachers abusing kids

The holyoffice blog says:

William Saletan notes that women teachers having sex with male pupils make up a tiny percentage of teachers nationwide, that their crimes generally involve sex with students 15 and older, and that they rarely employ violence or threats in coercing the teens to have sex with them. ...

The percentage of accused Catholic clerics was no higher than clergy of other denominations, and that it was dwarfed by the percentage of public school teachers accused of sexual misconduct ...

He makes the point that current hysteria about female teacher sex abuse is analogous to hysteria about priests several years ago.

The future of family court

British news:

A BISEXUAL man who answered an advert to father a lesbian couple's baby has won a landmark court battle to be one of the official parents, it was revealed yesterday. ...

Experts interviewed the youngster who told them she had two mothers -- Mummy and Ma -- identified as Ms A and Ms C.

In a bizarre twist, the girl's mother -- Ms A -- got pregnant a second time, with sperm donated by a homosexual who lives with another gay, and she also has a daughter aged three, known as E.

The lesbian couple now plan to "wed" under the recent change in the law permitting same-sex civil partnerships. The case is expected to set an amazing precedent following the boom in gay weddings.

Mrs Justice Black, one of England's top judges, ruled that the father was entitled to legal recognition that he had parental responsibility for the five-year-old.

She said that whatever the law may do to change the shape of family life, nothing could beat the fact a child had a natural parent.

The court appointed leading child psychiatrist Dr Claire Sturge to investigate the case.

The judge said: "Dr Sturge did not find D muddled about her family. She told Dr Sturge that she is lucky because she has two mummies. ..."

The two lesbians have agreed to increase his contact with D from once a month to every other Saturday, plus extra holidays.

Legal proceedings in relation to parental responsibility for the second child are pending.

This is a mess, and it will not be solved by having wacky child psychologists interview and assess the kids. The kids are not the crazy ones here.

Ordered to raise black consciousness

Ohio news:

Haines, who was accused of using racial slurs and threatening a black cab driver, must attend services at any one of Cincinnati's predominantly African-American churches.

"It seems readily apparent to me that you don't like black people," Judge William Mallory Jr. told Haines. "That's OK with me. But you have to understand that you are at the whim and authority of a black judge." ...

"If you want to get out of jail, you're going to have to raise your black consciousness," the judge said.

I didn't think that it was a crime to use racial slurs.

Feminists making the world worse

The new book Women Who Make the World Worse : and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports is already swamped with negative and spiteful reviews. It must have hit a nerve. Here is a positive review.

Update: There is apparently a campaign to trash this book. The Amazon reviews are absurdly negative.

Generalizations with obvious exceptions

The Dilbert blog says:

A friend shared with me an observation that I thought was provocative enough to get you all riled up. He says that when men tell a story about how their day went, it's usually focused on something good that happened. When women tell a story about their day, it's usually focused on something negative. BOCTAOE

That last acronym is Dilbert's own shorthand for But Of Course There Are Obvious Exceptions. It allows him to make sweeping generalizations.

Update: Dilbert has now revised his theory to say that complainers mate with non-complainers. Don't take his blog too seriously.

Copyrighted lawyer threat

The Smoking Gun posted a threatening letter including this:

We are well aware that Smoking Gun frequently elects to snidely disregard the content of letters from our firm, instead posting them on the website notwithstanding their designation as confidential legal communications and notwithstanding the legal arguments set forth in the correspondence. We request that in this instance, rather than having this typical knee-jerk response, ...

This letter is a confidential legal communication and is not for publication, and you are not authorized to publish this letter. ... Any publication disseminated or broadcast of any portion of this letter will constitute a breach of confidence and a violation of the Copyright Act.

The letter is from James Frey's law firm, and he is very upset that he might lose millions of dollars from a web site exposing the lies in his autobiography.

This is funny. I guess that I am also breaching the confidence by posting the above excerpt. These lawyer letters are amusing. Meanwhile, Frey sounded like a con man on the Larry King show. He sure fooled a lot of people with the biggest selling "nonfiction" book of 2005.

Update: Here is another confidential legal notice. The Smoking Gun is not intimidated by these silly lawyer notices.

Financial abortion for men

John Tierney write in the NY Times:

If the pro-choice side adopted a gender-neutral policy, then either the man or the woman would have the right to say no to parenthood. I don't know of anyone advocating that a woman be required to have an abortion, but there's another right that could be given to a man who impregnates a woman who isn't his wife. If the woman decided to go ahead and have the child, she would have to notify him and give him the option early in the pregnancy of absolving himself of any financial responsibility for the child. ...

But there's no reason that it couldn't be a little fairer. As Alito ruled, it's not an undue burden for a wife to notify her husband before an abortion. And it's not unfair, as Goldscheider proposes, for a single woman expecting child support to be required to tell the father as soon as she decides to keep the baby. If men are going to pay to play, they should at least know the score.

The column generated 7 hysterical feminist letters, including this from Tufts gynecology professor Steven J. Ralston:

In my professional experience, it is men who are least likely to be responsible when it comes to birth control and the least likely to use the form that they have the most control over: condoms.

What does he mean by this? His professional experience consists of examining women, and he says men are the least likely to use condoms? Are his female patients using condoms?

UK ceremonies

UK gay news:

Several newspapers, including the Daily Express, have reported that the word marriage is to be dropped from registry offices, apparently so as to not "offend homosexuals".

They say that rooms currently called "Marriage Suites" will now be called "Ceremony Suites" to stop lesbian and gay couples feeling neglected.

Feeling neglected?

Free booze benefits homeless alcoholics

Canada news:

TORONTO, Ontario (Reuters) -- Giving homeless alcoholics a regular supply of booze may improve their health and their behavior, the Canadian Medical Association Journal said in a study published
on Tuesday.

Seventeen homeless adults, all with long and chronic histories of alcohol abuse, were allowed up to 15 glasses of wine or sherry a day -- a glass an hour from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. -- in the Ottawa-based program, which started in 2002 and is continuing. ...

"Once we give a 'small amount' of alcohol and stabilize the addiction, we are able to provide health services ..."

He calls 15 drinks a day a "small amount"! A lot of people would just pass out after 15 drinks.

Irony abuse

Charlie writes that the irony police should lock this nut up:

I learned of the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams while I was giving a series of lectures in Shanghai, China. I was struck by the many ironies surrounding this controversial death penalty case.

The fact that I was in China learning of the execution of a man in the United States was the first irony that caught my attention. I asked a Chinese university student whether he supported the death penalty. He said, ''Yes, but I am from China."

The second of many ironies was that an elitist, foreign-born governor who made his fortune by promoting violence in his films denied Williams clemency.

Perhaps the most provocative irony, however, that occupied my mind while I thought of the execution of Williams was the similarities he shared with Martin Luther King Jr.

At the very least, someone should send him a dictionary. None of those things are at all ironic.

Leftist movies that rank poorly

The movie Good Night, and Good Luck finished 2005 ranked 101 in domestic gross, sandwiched in between Munich Brokeback Mountain. The latter two movies were released in December, and are still in the theaters. They won't do nearly as well as you might expect from the rave reviews from the critics.

Most consequential woman of the century

NY Post book review:

January 8, 2006 -- WHO was the most consequential woman in American politics during the 20th century? ...

A good case might be made for Eleanor Roosevelt, though FDR's wife is perhaps more iconic than significant.Then there's Phyllis Schlafly, the leading lady of American conservatism. As a renowned anti-feminist during feminism's heyday in the 1970s, she was said to be out of touch with her times. But it turns out that she was firmly in touch with her country's spirit, as she mounted an astonishing campaign to turn back the Equal Rights Amendment, a bit of constitutional mischief that was once the sine qua non of political feminism.

There is a new book on her by Donald T. Critchlow.

Tips for meeting Afghans

Here is what to do if you meet a Mohammedan Afgan:

Eat with your left hand as much as possible.

If you are a man, ask a about his wife, daughters or sisters.

Walk in front of someone at prayer.

Ask a Muslim if he is a Sunni or Shiite.

Call him "Hajji," "Mullah," or "Akhund", and not "raghead".

If you see a picture or rug in a private home that you like, shower the host with complimentary comments and he/she will feel culturally obligated to give it to you.

Take off your shirt and leaves your shoes on. Better yet, sit with your leg up so that your sole faces the Afghan.

You run the risk of offending the Afghan.

Calero still in jail

The Calero couple is still in jail:

Deputy District Attorney Jon ... Yamaguchi said "given their lack of responsibility" over the New Year's weekend, he didn't want the couple released on their own recognizance.

The prosecutor also said he didn't want them released in case they wanted to confront the boys' grandmother, Liberata Holden of Manteca -- who had summoned the officers who found the boys -- "for the predicament that the defendants find themselves in." ...

Calero and De La Vega wore jail jumpsuits and sniffled throughout their arraignment Friday, which came just hours after prosecutors formally charged them with two counts each of child endangerment.

Such a charge alleges the defendants "willfully" caused or allowed the children "to be placed in a situation where his or her person or health is endangered." Each charge carries a maximum sentence of six years.

The law also requires that the endangerment be "under circumstances or conditions likely to produce great bodily harm or death". I am still waiting for an estimate of the likelihood of great bodily harm, and what that harm is. I do not think that the DA has enough info yet to charge anyone with anything.

I also question locking them up because he might talk to his mother-in-law who schemed to steal custody of his kids. The Constitution allows him to confront his accusers. The DA seems to be particularly vindictive in order to satisfy news media folks who wanted to make a public example out of a bad parent.

Update: A reader writes:

I like your comments. If people dig a little deeper, Its not what it seems!

He has more on his blog. It is possible that Calero had a deal with the grandmother to watch his kids, but the grandmother set him up so that she could win a custody fight.

Single sex clubs banned

Wendy McElroy reports:

Last week, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against the Santa Rosa health club Body Central.

According to the agency, which enforces California's civil rights and anti-discrimination laws, the club's women-only policy violates the civil rights of men.

In 1995, the California Supreme Court decided a case in which a woman demanded entry into an exclusive men-only golf club. The court ruled that private clubs operating as businesses were required to follow state laws against discrimination.

I think that California should allow single-sex clubs. It is a little strange how liberals promote same-sex marriage but want to outlaw same-sex clubs.

Child neglect law

More on the child neglect case of 2 days ago.

Here is the California Penal Code:

273a. (a) Any person who, under circumstances or conditions likely to produce great bodily harm or death, willfully causes or permits any child to suffer, or inflicts thereon unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering, or having the care or custody of any child, willfully causes or permits the person or health of that child to be injured, or willfully causes or permits that child to be placed in a situation where his or her person or health is endangered, shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or in the state prison for two, four, or six years.

I listened to some radio talk show callers comment on whether parents should be prosecuted for leaving their home alone. They were just amazingly irrational and vindictive. For example, a caller argued that she raised latchkey children, but that was okay because she was working while the kids were left alone at home. If the parents left kids alone while partying, then she thinks that they should be prosecuted.

I don't see how this statute applies to the couple who left their kids home alone at all. The law is against willfully endangering a child in "conditions likely to produce great bodily harm or death". The kids were fine, and not in any significant danger that anyone has identified.

I am really appalled at the folks who approve of the grandmother's behavior. She refused to babysit the kids, had the (in-law) parents arrested, opportunistically seized temporary custody of the kids, and manipulated the kids into betraying their parents. I wouldn't give the kids to that grandmother. Most of these child care court cases are driven by custody disputes or vindictive relatives and neighbors, and busybodies are encouraged by cases like this one.

Here is another story:

The boys' father, Jacob Calero, 39, appeared at the hearing in a yellow jumpsuit and handcuffed.

Any decision made in the hearing will not be disclosed because representatives from all parties involved are under a gag order issued by Judge Lois Haight. ...

"The judge must determine what happened and why the parents acted as they did, and that could take some time."

So we may not hear what happened. The father has apparently lost his constitutional rights already.

Birth control pill risks

Science Daily:

In the January issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, researchers have published a new investigation measuring sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) before and after discontinuation of the oral contraceptive pill. The research concluded that women who used the oral contraceptive pill may be exposed to long-term problems from low values of "unbound" testosterone potentially leading to continuing sexual, metabolic, and mental health consequences.

Here is another story.

Update: NY Times story here.

Local earthquake

An earthquake woke me up this morning:

The temblor registed 3.14 on the Richter scale and struck at 6:05 a.m. It originated 6.3 miles beneath the earth's surface, the USGS said.

The epicenter was just a couple of miles from my house.

Alien abductee indicators

58 common indicators of UFO encounters or abductions by alien beings:

Have had unexplainable missing or lost time of one hour or more.
Have been paralyzed in bed with a being in your room.
Have unusual scars or marks with no possible explanation on how you received them (small scoop indentation, straight line scar, triangular marks, scars in roof of mouth, in nose, behind or in ears, etc.)
Have seen balls of light or flashes of light in your home or other locations
Have a memory of flying through the air which could not be a dream, or many dreams involving flying. ...

These are also indicators of schizophrenia.

Home alone kids

San Ramon California news:

OAKLAND, Calif. A husband and wife were arrested today at Oakland Airport after returning from their New Year's celebration in Las Vegas.

Police say Jacob Calero and his wife, Michelle de la Vega, left his two young sons home alone last Friday morning while the newlyweds headed out of town to ring in the new year alone.

Authorities say the children's grandmother called police when she began to suspect the couple had left without the kids after being unable to find a babysitter.

Calero and de la Vega were married last year. The children's mother died in 2003.

The boys were aged 10 and 5, and were doing just fine at home. They had supplies of food. The parents were charged with felony child endangerment. No one has said what the danger was.

I don't see how this justifies a felony charge. The kids might have been in greater danger if the parents took them to Las Vegas.

It is amazing to hear people comment on this case on a radio talk show. Apparently a lot of kids these ages get left alone at home, both in the USA and the rest of the world, without many problems.

Some callers describe their own parenting practices, and dogmatically declare that all parents should do the same. One caller even said that she refuses to leave her cats alone, and hires babysitters to watch her cats.

Some callers blame the grandmother, because she was a busybody who was scheming to get custody of the kids. She had refused to take the kids during the trip. She now has temporary custody of the kids.

Birth rates and demographics

Mark Steyn writes in The New Criterion:

Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. ...

Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it's not what this thing's about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off. ...

Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%. In America, demographic trends suggest that the blue states ought to apply for honorary membership of the EU: In the 2004 election, John Kerry won the 16 with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest. By 2050, there will be 100 million fewer Europeans, 100 million more Americans--and mostly red-state Americans.

He says that demographics favor a Mohammedan takeover of Europe.

NEA pays itself well

WSJ article:

We already knew that the NEA's top brass lives large. Reg Weaver, the union's president, makes $439,000 a year. The NEA has a $58 million payroll for just over 600 employees, more than half of whom draw six-figure salaries. Last year the average teacher made only $48,000, so it seems you're better off working as a union rep than in the classroom.

The article also describes how the NEA gives money to left-wing causes.

Choosing women's work

Linda Hirshman writes in the American Prospect:

During the '90s, I taught a course in sexual bargaining at a very good college. Each year, after the class reviewed the low rewards for child-care work, I asked how the students anticipated combining work with child-rearing. At least half the female students described lives of part-time or home-based work. Guys expected their female partners to care for the children. When I asked the young men how they reconciled that prospect with the manifest low regard the market has for child care, they were mystified. Turning to the women who had spoken before, they said, uniformly, "But she chose it."

It is hard to imagine what "sexual bargaining" she was teaching those college students. It sounds as if they understood their self-interest a lot better than her.

David Brooks trashes her article for other reasons.

There are feminist bloggers who are very upset with Brooks. They argue that a woman shouldn't choose child care because a man wouldn't choose child care. I am a man and I have chosen to spend a lot of my time on child care. It seems like a reasonable choice to me.

Priests on trial for their beliefs

Italy news:

Signor Cascioli's contention echoed in numerous atheist books and internet sites is that there was no reliable evidence that Jesus lived and died in 1st-century Palestine apart from the Gospel accounts, which Christians took on faith. There is therefore no basis for Christianity, he claims.

Signor Cascioli's one-man campaign came to a head at a court hearing last April when he lodged his accusations of "abuse of popular credulity" and "impersonation", both offences under the Italian penal code. He argued that all claims for the existence of Jesus from sources other than the Bible stem from authors who lived "after the time of the hypothetical Jesus" and were therefore not reliable witnesses.

Meanwhile, the Vatican has charged another priest with heresy.

Women compete differently

Research news:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Research shows that U.S. women not only compete differently than men in the workplace, they also compete differently with each other.

"It's been such a taboo subject. To say women have problems with each other is seen as anti-woman, but it's not," said Nan Mooney, author of "I Can't Believe She Did That! Why Women Betray Other Women at Work."

"Women are afraid to raise a problem, so it goes underground, and it comes out in a twisted way. Why is it so hard to work with other women? Why are we so nasty to each other?"

Mooney said women aren't more competitive than men, but that they compete differently -- they often shy from direct conflict for talking behind one another's backs, sabotaging success and feeling threatened by other women, reported USA Today Friday.

However, some researchers say the debate of women competing more passive-aggressively than men is misplaced because employees compete differently based on their personality, not on their sex and the issue perpetuates a negative and untrue stereotype.

Note the politically correct denial. Such denials often follow research that confirms stereotypes.

String theory vitality

Not Even Wrong blog:

Gross mentioned the recent New Scientist article quoting him as admitting string theory was in trouble, saying that the article misrepresented what he said. At the recent Solvay conference he had said something like "In string theory we don't know what we are talking about", and the New Scientist reporter interpreted that as meaning there was trouble, an interpretation Gross disagreed with. ... Gross went on to claim that really string theory is a vital subject ...

Not many scientists brag about not knowing anything.

Example of failed psychotherapy

Grief therapy doesn't work:

What about people like police officers and firefighters who witness terrible events? Is it helpful for them to reflect on their experiences?

For years it was believed that emergency workers should undergo a debriefing process to focus on and relive their experiences; the idea was that this would make them feel better and prevent mental health problems down the road. After 9/11, for example, well-meaning counselors flocked to New York to help police officers, firefighters and rescue workers deal with the trauma of what they had seen.

But did it do any good? In an extensive review of the research, a team led by Richard McNally, a clinical psychologist at Harvard, concluded that debriefing procedures have little benefit and might even hurt by interrupting the normal healing process. People often distract themselves from thinking about painful events right after they occur, and this may be better than mentally reliving the events.

A lot of other psychotherapy doesn't work either, and much of it is harmful.

2005 Award for Political Incorrectness

Redstate.org says:

And the winner of the 2005 Award for Political Incorrectness is...(pan of vast audience with expectant expressions)... Phyllis Schlafly.

This past year Mrs. Schlafly took on the federal government's deepening alliance with radical feminism. In the process she debunked many of the Left's pet explanations for family break-down. ...

For 30 years the Leftists have waged a tenacious assault on society's bedrock institutions, including fatherhood and families. As the rest of us silently stood by, feminists branded dads with epithets such as deadbeat, abuser, and patriarchal oppressor.

And now Phyllis Schlafly has shed the light of truth on their evil scheme.

The text has links to her anti-feminist columns.

Getting thanked

Marilyn vos Savant answers this question in Parade magazine today:

I overheard a woman say, I did all that work and didn't get a word of thanks!" after she cooked a dinner at church. What do you think of people who expect to be thanked for the things they do and who get upset when they don't get thanked?
-Sue, Sylacauga, Ala

I appreciate their willingness to be helpful at all. The fact that they want to be thanked just shows that they performed their good deeds because they felt a bit obligated to do so, rather than simply out of a desire to help.

I don't think that Marilyn is correct. The volunteer wanted to help, and to know that her help was worthwhile. If no one thanks her, then it casts doubt on whether her help was worthwhile.

She may have a sincere and unselfish desire to help, and yet cease helping when she doesn't get any positive feedback that her help is doing any good.

Animal models prove toy preferences

An Evolution and Human Behavior study says:

The percent of contact time with toys typically preferred by boys (a car and a ball) was greater in male vervets (n = 33) than in female vervets (n = 30) ( P < .05), whereas the percent of contact time with toys typically preferred by girls (a doll and a pot) was greater in female vervets than in male vervets ( P < .01).

Some people think that girls only play with dolls because they are taught to play with dolls. Those people must have never had kids. There are some instinctual preferences, as shown by animal experiments.

Education Myths

If you think that schools or teachers need more money, then see Education Myths : What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools and Why it Isn't So, by Jay P. Greene. From a review:

Greene asserts that most arguments about inadequate spending are based on anecdotes not facts. He concludes that even if schools in poor urban areas were provided with more funds, there is no guarantee they would use the funds effectively. Other myths that he debunks: social problems such as poverty contribute to low academic performance, smaller class sizes produce improvements, certified teachers are more effective, teachers are underpaid, public schools' performance has declined, private schools are more racially segregated than public schools. These myths are perpetuated by powerful interest groups, including teachers' unions, asserts Greene.

I think that the schools would do better if they had less money.

Letterman restrained

New Mexico news:

Late last week, a Santa Fe District Court judge signed a temporary restraining order against talk-show host David Letterman alleging [sic] he has tormented a city resident for more than 10 years by using code words on his television program. ...

Judge are famous for issuing restraining orders without any valid basis, but this is ridiculous.

Academic political correctness

Some leftist academics want to wreck the career of Filipino-American named Kiwi Camara wrote "nig" in his class notes as a 17-year-old. Some amazingly intolerant leftists interpreted it as a racial slur.

The 16 expiring clauses

AP news:

Sixteen provisions of the USA Patriot Act expire Dec. 31 if not renewed by Congress:

Section 201 - Gives federal officials the authority to intercept wire, spoken and electronic communications relating to terrorism.

Section 202 - Gives federal officials the authority to intercept wire, spoken and electronic communications relating to computer fraud and abuse offenses.

Most of them are not too controversial.

Girls avoid Computer Science

Boston news:

Today, Souvaine chairs the Tufts University computer science department, which has more female professors than male. But few younger women have followed in her generation's footsteps. Next spring, when 22 computer science graduates accept their Tufts diplomas, only four will be women.

Born in contemporary times, free of the male-dominated legacy common to other sciences and engineering, computer science could have become a model for gender equality. In the early 1980s, it had one of the highest proportions of female undergraduates in science and engineering. And yet with remarkable speed, it has become one of the least gender-balanced fields in American society. ...

They view the dearth of women as symptomatic of a larger failure in their field, which has recently become less attractive to promising young men, as well. Women are "the canaries in the mine," said Harvard computer science professor Barbara J. Grosz.

It is not discrimination.

Top 10 Conservative Women

Human Events:

Top 10 Women in Conservative Movement
Ranked by the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute.

1. Ann Coulter
2. Phyllis Schlafly
3. Dr. Laura Schlessinger
4. Bay Buchanan
5. Michelle Malkin
6. Marji Ross
7. Michelle Easton
8. Star Parker
9. Sally Pipes
10. Elaine Donnelly

Male Original Sin

Anthropologist Lionel Tiger

Male resentment of the self-righteous and automatic public support for women's interests and issues has been increasingly on the boil for some time. Civic celebrations of antipathy to men such as the Violence Against Women Act are finally generating specific and pointed responses by men fatigued, if still baffled, by the knee-jerk assumption that they suffer irredeemably from what I call Male Original Sin.

At my university as at countless others, one of the very first official greeting to students is a rape seminar predicated on the intrinsic danger males carry with them. And in family courts, the presumption of male behavioral malefaction has yielded heartbreakingly numerous cases in which men are charged with domestic violence to which courts overwhelmingly--often in brief hearings in which the male is not even present--issue temporary "restraining orders." These frequently segue into permanence, and award women the dwelling they've shared, financial support and the all-important privilege of custody--mothers gain custody in 66% of uncontested cases and 75% of contested ones. Less than a quarter of parents are awarded joint custody.

Judges issue such orders based only on the word of the alleged victim. It is small wonder the overwhelming majority of such actions are sought and achieved by women. It has been legitimately argued that there is a merciless postmarital racket of therapists, lawyers, judges and governmental advocates who prosper because it is so easy to define males as guilty.

Meanwhile, the publicly financed educational system is at least 20% better at producing successful female students than male, yet hardly anyone sees this as remarkable gender discrimination. While there is a vigorous national program to equalize male and female rates of success in science and math, there is not a shred of equivalent attention to the far more central practical impact of the sharp deficit males face in reading and writing.

He recommends the New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Men.

Defending parental rights

A reader asks why I would side with the father in Thursday's post below, when common sense would indicate that he has some wacky attitudes that might be detrimental to the child.

I come to this case being a conservative and a rationalist. Conservatives believe in individual responsibility, parental autonomy, and freedom. The opposite view is characterized by the slogan, It Takes A Village To Raise A Child, popularized by Hillary Clinton.

I am also a rationalist who believes that decisions should be justified by logic and empirical evidence. The opposite view comes from people who cite common sense and cannot back it up with any evidence.

The court in this case attempts to second-guess routine and legal parenting decisions. I would be against such second-guessing of either the mom or the dad. I have no idea whether the dad's child-rearing theories are best for the child, and neither does anyone else. The judge does not give any rational justification for his decision.

Family court violates 1A

Free speech expert Prof. Volokh gives an example of a Louisiana court giving orders that violate the First Amendment. I have some comments there.

A friend commented that if the parents cannot agree about diaper size, then they cannot co-parent so the courts have to intervene.

No, that doesn't follow at all. All we can deduce is that the mom thought that she had something to gain in family court by voicing a complaint about diaper size. And that the court rewards parents who bring such complaints.

King Kong released

I just saw King Kong, and it was better than I expected. I was surprised at how closely it tracked the 1933 version. In particular, it was just as politically incorrect:

Pinkerton writes: Any movie that features white people sailing off to the Third World to capture a giant ape and carry it back to the West for exploitation is going to be seen as a metaphor for colonialism and racism.

Movie reviewer David Edelstein, writing in SLATE, notes the "implicit racism of KING KONG - the implication that Kong stands for the black man brought in chains from a dark island (full of murderous primitive pagans) and with a penchant for skinny white blondes."

Comparing the new film with the original, the WASHINGTON POST's Stephen Hunter observed, "It remains a parable of exploitation, cultural self-importance, the arrogance of the West, all issues that were obvious in the original but unexamined; they remain unexamined here, if more vivid."

What disappointed me was that the movie was twice as long as the original, and yet it offered very little that was not in the original. All the good scenes were direct copies. I thought that the $200M would buy something more.

Update: I just watched the original 1933 movie again. It is as good as I had remembered. In some ways, it is a more convincing movie than the remake.

Old footprints

NY Times science news:

What is one to make of the intriguing footprints found in Mexico?

The scientists who discovered them said last summer that they were made by humans walking in fresh volcanic ash 40,000 years ago. This seemed incredible, since no human presence in the Americas had been established earlier than about 13,000 years ago.

So geologists went to the scene, near Puebla. They came to an even more astonishing conclusion: the prints were in 1.3-million-year-old rock, meaning the prints were laid down more than a million years before modern Homo sapiens evolved in Africa.

There is something seriously wrong with this story. If they are really human footprints, then they should be added to The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts.

Study shows that preferences change

Freakonomics says:

Many scientists believe that a person's sexual orientation is determined before birth, a function of genetic fate. ...

But taken as a whole, the numbers in Francis's study suggest that there may be a causal effect here - that having a relative with AIDS may change not just sexual behavior but also self-reported identity and desire.

IOW, many scientists cling to a belief that is contrary to the data.

Now the author of the study, Andy Francis, finds it necessary to say:

The findings do not imply, in any sense, that homosexuality is morally wrong. This is a positive, not normative, paper. I do not want others to misconstrue my findings. All members of society deserve equality and respect. Virtually all liberal theories support this notion. I do not believe that it is necessary that sexual orientation be entirely biologically determined for homosexuals and bisexuals to merit and obtain equality and respect.

This is hilarious. You would think that a scientist could state the obvious without doing politically correct backflips.

Leftist movie flops

Critical acclaim for movies:

NEW YORK - The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures gave its best-picture award Monday to "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's sparse, black-and-white depiction of Edward R. Murrow's on-air battles against Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The group spread the awards around, naming Ang Lee as best director for the cowboy romance "Brokeback Mountain."

I've predicted that these would be flops with the public. Nobody wants to see movies that idolize commies and gay cowboys.

A reader writes:

Rating movies on political ideology makes you sound like a communist. Also, you are factually wrong. Million Dollar Baby made over $100e6. The public did not hate it. Good Night made $22e6. It probably cost half that to make. These numbers are US and Canada box office gross. Foreign and DVD often match the domestic box office numbers. What conclusions can you draw from the comparison of popular success to the critical acclaim? Whatever you come up with I'll bet I can find lots of counterexamples.

Let's look at the gross for recent Best Picture Oscar winners.

Million Dollar Baby (2004) $100,492,203
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) $377,027,325
Chicago (2002) $170,687,518
A Beautiful Mind (2001) $170,742,341
Gladiator (2000) $187,705,427
American Beauty (1999) $130,096,601
Shakespeare in Love (1998) $100,317,794

A lot of people read rave reviews of Million Dollar Baby, and went to see it thinking that it would be a female Rocky. Instead it was a euthanasia movie.

I don't doubt that movies can make money based on good reviews from critics. But leftist ideological movies never do as well as you might expect from the reviews.

Top dictionary lookups

Dictionary news:

The 10 most frequently looked up words and their definitions, according to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary site:

1. Integrity -- Firm adherence to a code, especially moral or artistic values; incorruptibility.

2. Refugee -- One that flees; especially a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution.

3. Contempt -- Willful disobedience to or open disrespect of a court, judge or legislative body.

4. Filibuster -- The use of extreme dilatory tactics in an attempt to delay or prevent action, especially in a legislative assembly.

5. Insipid -- Lacking in qualities that interest, stimulate or challenge; dull, flat.

6. Tsunami -- A great sea wave produced especially by submarine earth movement or volcanic eruption.

7. Pandemic -- Occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population.

8. Conclave -- A private meeting or secret assembly, especially a meeting of Roman Catholic cardinals secluded continuously while choosing a pope.

9. Levee -- An embankment for preventing flooding; a continuous dike or ridge (as of earth) for confining the irrigation areas of land to be flooded.

10: Inept -- Generally incompetent; bungling.

Curious list. Some of these have obvious explanations. The press switched from the popular term "tidal wave" to "tsunami", so everyone had to look it up.

My hunch is that people had to look up other words because there confused by changing meanings. I always thought that a "filibuster" was just a delay in a vote, caused by a dissenter who wants to give some speeches. In the last couple of years, a lot of people have used it to mean blocking a vote from every taking place.

The Siren Song of Sex With Boys

This NY Times article surprised me:

Though it might seem that way from the headlines, women having sex with teenage boys is not new. A federal Department of Education study called "Educator Sexual Misconduct," released last year, found that 40 percent of the educators who had been reported for sexual misconduct with students were women. ...

But Professor Rind and others point out that Canada and about half of Europe have set the age of consent at 14 after recommendations by national commissions. To set it much higher, as most states do, they say, ignores the research, and the hormones.

I do agree with the article that it is a big mistake to lump all sex crimes together. Some are much worse than others.

Campus free speech

University free speech story:

[Jihad Daniel, an employee of William Patterson University, a public school in New Jersey] privately replied to an unsolicited March 7 mass e-mail from Professor Arlene Holpp Scala promoting a viewing and discussion of a film described as "a lesbian relationship story." Daniel's March 8 e-mail to Professor Scala requested that he not be sent "any mail about 'Connie and Sally' and 'Adam and Steve.'" Daniel went on, "These are perversions. ..."

The employee was reprimanded.

The prof is the one guilty of sexual harassment, if anyone. Prof Scala sent an email to Daniel promoting discussion about a lesbian story. Daniel responded with his opinion. If Prof Scala didn't want Daniel's opinion, then she should not have asked for it.

You can concoct any politically incorrect analogy you want, but I think that anytime a prof asks an employee for a personal opinion, the prof should be able to deal with any answer she gets without whining to the administration.

Abortion rate may not affect crime

The Freakonomics blog says:

Thanks to articles in the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, a working paper by Chris Foote and Chris Goetz that is sharply critical of John Donohue and me has gotten an enormous amount of attention.

In that working paper Foote and Goetz criticized the analysis underlying one of the tables in our original article that suggested a link between legalized abortion and crime.

Steven D. Levitt's main claim to fame is his theory that the fall in the crime rate is entirely explained by legalized abortion.

Now a new study has shown that the abortion-crime theory was based on some data processing errors. Levitt's rebuttal is that there is other data to support his theory. His theory may be wrong.

Ellen Goodman writes:

Somewhere along the way, the dividing line over gay issues picked up and moved. It's no longer between red and blue states, or left and right wings, but between nature and nurture. Or to be more precise, between those who believe that homosexuality is a choice and those who believe that homosexuality is innate. ...

Let's remember that the evidence is with those on the nature side of the dividing line. While we don't know the precise biology, the weight of research suggests that sexual orientation is indeed something we are born with. Perhaps there is a ''gay gene." Perhaps the Japanese scientists who found how a gene alters the sexual orientation of the fruit fly will find a similar switch for people.

No, the scientific evidence is against sexual orientation being innate, and it is very unlikely that any such genetic switch for people will be found.

As Goodman explains, liberals widely believe that people are more likely to support the gay agenda if they think that homosexuality is innate. So they promote these unscientific explanations.

The Myth of No-Cost Immigrants

Investor's Business Daily says:

Immigration Reform: Conventional wisdom says immigrants are not a financial burden to taxpayers because they work hard, pay taxes and rarely go on the dole. But it's a myth, and a new study blows another hole in it.

The University of Florida finds that immigrant families have been costing that state a net $1,800 per household per year, a financial burden much larger than previously thought.

The findings surprised the study's author, who is a pro-immigration Democrat. After crunching the numbers, economist David Denslow discovered immigrants -- legal and illegal -- were consuming much more in public services and paying much less in taxes than the average resident. ...

In fact, a recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies found that the average welfare payout to immigrant households, both legal and illegal, has changed little and remains about $2,000 a year, which is 50% higher than the payout for natives.

The 1996 welfare reform did not change the average benefits to immigrants.

List of annoying people

Iowa news:

STRONGHURST, Ill. ? An eighth?grader at West Central Junior High has been removed from school and may face a charge of disorderly conduct after school officials learned last week about a list that named students and school staff the boy considered irritating...

Amazing. I considered putting a list of annoying people on my blog. I had no idea that someone could get kicked out of school for that.

A Man's Right to Choose

Dalton Conley writes:

Many liberals who oppose Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s nomination to the Supreme Court focus on his (losing) position in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1991 case about a Pennsylvania law that would have required women seeking abortions to notify their husbands. "Pennsylvania has a legitimate interest in furthering the husband's interest in the fate of the fetus," is the most widely quoted part of his opinion in that case. ...

Judge Alito's thinking about the role of men in reproductive decision-making is in keeping with how legal thinking needs to evolve in this age of readily available DNA testing. Nor is his position contrary to national sentiment: a majority of Americans feel that the husband should be notified about an abortion.

His only problem was not going far enough, ...

The inequity is that the woman gets to make the abortion decision, but the man has to pay child support.