Silly gripes about an honorary degree

Chancellor Mark Wrighton of Washington University, St. Louis has put out this lame statement:

I apologize for the anguish this decision has caused to many members of our community.

In bestowing this degree, the University is not endorsing Mrs. Schlafly's views or opinions; rather, it is recognizing an alumna of the University whose life and work have had a broad impact on American life and have sparked widespread debate and controversies that in many cases have helped people better formulate and articulate their own views about the values they hold....

One student complains about the voting:

The committee's recommendation of Ms. Schlafly was based on a complicated voting system. Voting occurred in two stages. In our first meeting, we ranked our preferences from approximately thirty names. The nominees were ranked based on the first balloting, and the top five were collected in a slate. We voted yes or no on the entire slate. An objection by one student was met with hostile opposition. The block of five names was then approved unanimously.

This list of protest letters includes these gems:

First, let us state clearly and firmly that our opposition to the selection of Mrs. Schlafly is not based on a rejection of her political, social, and ideological opinions. ...

When Mrs. Schlafly writes in her nationally syndicated column in 2006 that "Boys [sic] do not want to go to a college that eliminates the macho sports," she insults so many in our community: members of presumably non-macho male sports teams, ...

Mrs. Schlafly writes in a 2004 column that "For years, the universities have sanctimoniously proclaimed the sanctified value of diversity, but they define diversity to mean only giving space to radical leftwingers and feminists." ...

(Signed by 40 faculty, staff, and students in Arts & Sciences and the GWB School of Social Work)

Here is a bitter female writing prof who is mad at the world:

I hope I'm not telling your something you don't already know when I say that Washington University is not an ideal climate for women, although it is not unlike the world at large. The discontent that women academics feel here is chronic and grating.

Mary Jo Bang, Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program

This engineering prof is worried that he'll lose grant money if Wash. U. loses its left-wing reputation:

Finally, let me mention a concern near to my heart as an active, federally funded researcher. Every grant application that I submit to the National Science Foundation must address the broader impacts of my work, including how it supports the education of women and underrepresented minorities. ... I shudder to think of how our actions today may bias the reviewers of future grant proposals from Washington University.

Jeremy Buhler, Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering

The Social Work profs say that different opinions are encouraged, as long as no one disparages college profs:

She routinely disparages whole groups of people, such as ... college professors ... Universities are places where people are invited to voice opinions across the political spectrum.

The Art profs don't like her style of art:

Moreover, she has brought zeal to her denunciations and often mocks those with contrasting views. We know a performance artist when we see one, and Ms. Schlafly qualifies as such.

The English dept. chairman took offense to this column:

What was the motive behind 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui's killing of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech? Why was he consumed with hate, resentment and bitterness?

Cho was an English Department major and senior. As a frequent lecturer on college campuses, I have discovered that the English Departments are often the weirdest and/or the most leftwing.

He complains that her opinion is "unnuanced" and disrespectful of opposing views:

have raised my voice in part because graduating English Majors, and others among our students, expressed their shock at Mrs Schlafly's comment about the Virginia Tech murderer (I presume I don't need to repeat it here), and bewilderment that the university can be honoring one who can write such things. I cannot think of anything more offensive directed at my professional discipline and my students throughout my career. I do not believe that the expression of that opinion, which is corrosively irresponsible, assists any process of rational civic discourse whatsoever. What complicates the free speech defense is that opinion is sometimes the enemy of truth; and manufacturing such opinion, unnuanced and polarizing, has been Mrs Schlafly's work. Her disrespect for opposing views is unhappily evident even from today's newspaper. I doubt that she would share your value of diversity; but thank you sincerely for restating it.

David Lawton, Executive Director, New Chaucer Society, Professor and Chair, Department of English

A law prof's main objection is that she criticized the protesters:

Ms. Schlafly's principles are antithetical to the values for which Washington University purports to stand.

Indeed, Phyllis Schlafly's recent statements referring to the protesters - hundreds of faculty and students - as "a bunch of bitter women," "a bunch of losers," who need "to get a life" only highlights how antithetical her views are to those of rational discourse that should prevail in a great university.

Richard Kuhns, Professor of Law

Mary-Jean Cowell complains about her not support female college sports enough:

Moreover, considering that much of the WU achievement in collegiate sports in recent years has been the gift of our female athletes, we certainly do not show them respect in honoring a woman who is far from a supporter of equal participation for women in sports.

There are more wacky letters. They just prove how narrow-minded leftist academics can be.

New study says some girls don't like math

The Boston Globe reports:

Now two new studies by economists and social scientists have reached a perhaps startling conclusion: An important part of the explanation for the gender gap, they are finding, are the preferences of women themselves. When it comes to certain math- and science-related jobs, substantial numbers of women - highly qualified for the work - stay out of those careers because they would simply rather do something else.

One study of information-technology workers found that women’s own preferences are the single most important factor in that field’s dramatic gender imbalance. Another study followed 5,000 mathematically gifted students and found that qualified women are significantly more likely to avoid physics and the other “hard” sciences in favor of work in medicine and biosciences.

Is this really "startling"? What else did people think?

Salt is good for you

ScienceDaily reports:

Contrary to long-held assumptions, high-salt diets may not increase the risk of death, according to investigators from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. They reached their conclusion after examining dietary intake among a nationally representative sample of adults in the U.S. The Einstein researchers actually observed a significantly increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease (CVD) associated with lower sodium diets. ...

After adjusting for known CVD risk factors, such as smoking, diabetes and blood pressure, the one-fourth of the sample who reported consuming the lowest amount of sodium were found to be 80% more likely to die from CVD compared to the one-fourth of the sample consuming the highest level of sodium.

It is a big myth that table salt is unhealthy. The only known adverse effect is on those with high blood pressure, and they can compensate by taking high-blood pressure drugs.

Man-hating advice columnist

The Minneapolis newspaper has this Ask Amy column:

Dear Amy: My boyfriend and I were watching my 5-year-old niece. She came to me and told me that my boyfriend said he was going to punch her in the nose. I know that when my boyfriend is playing with the kids he plays around and says things, but he is adamant that he didn't say that.

I spoke with my niece's parents, and we chalked it up as a misunderstanding.

But now my boyfriend does not want her playing with him, and he refuses to watch her unless someone is with him every minute.

He is in law enforcement and says he sees things like this all the time, ...

Amy says: Most of what young children say has some basis in reality. ... this incident highlights his own immaturity.

I do agree with him about this one thing, however: He should not be alone with your niece because he can't be trusted to treat her well.

Amy's advice justifies the boyfriend's paranoia. If adults are going to automatically believe the false and petty accusations of a 5-year-old with an overactive imagination, then he has good reason to be cautious.

Update: Amy Dickinson is also criticized by Glenn Sacks.

Bernie Ward was caught in the act

KGO radio host Bernie Ward was recently convicted on child pornography, and today Brian Copeland, one of his fellow hosts, revealed on KGO that Ward was once caught masturbating while doing his Sunday morning "God Talk" religion show! He was on the air talking to callers, and doing perverted sex chat at the same time.

Ward is an Angry Left Bush-hater, and his story is that he was distributing child pornography as part of his research into right-wing hypocrisy.

People have stereotypical beliefs

Scientific American magazine reports:

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life,” Jesse Jackson once told an audience, “than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery -- then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

Jackson’s remark illustrates a basic fact of our social existence, one that even a committed black civil-rights leader cannot escape: ideas that we may not endorse -- for example, that a black stranger might harm us but a white one probably would not -- can nonetheless lodge themselves in our minds and, without our permission or awareness, color our perceptions, expectations and judgments.

Using a variety of sophisticated methods, psychologists have established that people unwittingly hold an astounding assortment of stereotypical beliefs and attitudes about social groups: ...

Now researchers are probing deeper. They want to know: Where exactly do such biases come from?

One of the themes of this blog is that when researchers attempt mindreading, they often devise overly complex theories when simple ones suffice. In this case, there is a simple explanation for why someone might fear being robbed by a black man more than a white man.

Requiring photo id

A reader writes to favor photo ID for voting, and claims that her bank requires photo ID just to make a deposit. But after a couple of questions, she admitted that she had never tried making a deposit without photo ID, and does not really know what the bank policy is!

I think that a lot of people probably like to present photo ID. It is their way of saying, "I am not an illegal alien." They also like to show off their major credit card, as a way of saying, "I am not a deadbeat with a low credit score." California is crawling with illegal aliens and deadbeats. You have to show off your status however you can, I guess.

Update: The reader writes to say that the bank teller told her that it is bank policy to ask for photo ID or an ATM card. She does not know what the bank would do if no such card were presented.

Mohammedan man kills daughter

Here is news from Iraq:

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. ‘If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,’ he said with no trace of remorse.

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city’s Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. ‘They are men and know what honour is,’ he said. ...

‘Death was the least she deserved,’ said Abdel-Qader. ‘I don’t regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion,’ he said. […] ‘That girl was a mistake in my life. I know God is blessing me for what I did,’ he said, his voice swelling with pride.

These folks are not going to be civilized any time soon.

How girls get knee injuries

The NY Times explains how Title IX has led to thousands of girls getting seriouns knee injuries:

Title IX, the federal law enacted in 1972 mandating equal opportunity in sports, has helped to shape a couple of generations of girls who believe they are as capable and as tough as any boy. With a mix of resignation and pride, Rich Pierson said to me: "We've raised these girls to be headstrong and independent. ...

By Janelle's and her mother's count, her club team, with 18 players, had suffered eight A.C.L. tears — eight — during her high-school years: Janelle's two, another player's two and four other girls with one each. A high-school teammate one class above Janelle endured chronic ankle problems and, according to a Miami Herald article, six ankle operations — three in each leg — over the course of her four years on the varsity soccer team.

This casualty rate was not due to some random spike in South Florida. It is part of a national trend in the wake of Title IX and the explosion of sports participation among girls and young women. From travel teams up through some of the signature programs in women's college sports, women are suffering injuries that take them off the field for weeks or seasons at a time, or sometimes forever.

Girls and boys diverge in their physical abilities as they enter puberty and move through adolescence. Higher levels of testosterone allow boys to add muscle and, even without much effort on their part, get stronger. In turn, they become less flexible. Girls, as their estrogen levels increase, tend to add fat rather than muscle. They must train rigorously to get significantly stronger. The influence of estrogen makes girls' ligaments lax, and they outperform boys in tests of overall body flexibility — a performance advantage in many sports, but also an injury risk when not accompanied by sufficient muscle to keep joints in stable, safe positions. Girls tend to run differently than boys — in a less-flexed, more-upright posture — which may put them at greater risk when changing directions and landing from jumps. Because of their wider hips, they are more likely to be knock-kneed — yet another suspected risk factor.

This divergence between the sexes occurs just at the moment when we increasingly ask more of young athletes, especially if they show talent: play longer, play harder, play faster, play for higher stakes. And we ask this of boys and girls equally — unmindful of physical differences.

Phyllis Schlafly warned about this five years ago.

People like cheap wines that are labeled expensive

Here is wine research:

The researchers scanned the brains of 21 volunteer wine novices as they administered tiny tastes of wine, measuring sensations in the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain where flavor responses apparently register. The subjects were told only the price of the wines. Without their knowledge, they tasted one wine twice, and were given two different prices for that wine. Invariably they preferred the one they thought was more expensive.

The best wines are the cheap wines that have been relabeled as expensive wines.

Michael McClish to be charged with murder

I commented previously that Michael McClish was tried and convicted of rape on some very flimsy evidence. He did not get a fair trial. It appeared to me that he was framed because the authorities suspect him of murder, and could not prove it.

Now he is being charged with murder:

SANTA CRUZ - The only person ever publicly named a suspect in the 2006 murder of a pregnant Ben Lomond woman was arrested on two counts of murder Tuesday.

Michael Patrick McClish, 38, will be charged with the slaying of Joanna "Asha" Veil, 28, and her unborn child, Anina, today, according to authorities at the Wednesday afternoon press conference at the District Attorney's Office.

I hope he gets a fair trial. The authorities have finally revealed that the father of the unborn baby was the victim's estranged husband, not McLish. No motive or murder weapon has been reported.

I will be waiting to see the actual evidence. I know that there are a lot of local folks who think that McLish must be guilty because he has shifty eyes, or because he was once rude to a customer, or some similar reason. I hope that someone has better evidence than that.

No American science grad shortage

A new Nature mag article addresses the myth that the USA has a shortage of skilled scientists and engineers:

In absolute numbers, the U.S. has more top-scoring kids in math and science than any other country studied–by far. ...

The answer, of course, is that the groups that stand to benefit from a public perception of an S&E shortage–the tech industry (who want an expanded H-1B work visa program for its cheap labor), the immigration lawyers (who want an expanded H-1B for obvious reasons), the education lobby (”Give us more money so we can remedy the shortage”) and so on hire the slickest PR people money can buy. They’ve been at it for years, to the point at which many people in Congress, the press and the public at large simply take it for granted that “Johnnie can’t do math.”

We are producing as many college grads in science and engineering as we can use. We do not need to import cheap labor from elsewhere.

Phyllis gets honorary degree

Some people are complaining that Wash. U. (St. Louis) is giving Phyllis Schlafly an honorary degree. The quote that seems to bug people the most is:

By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don’t think you can call it rape.

Until about 30 years ago, the word "rape" was used for serious crimes other than marital sexual relations. Even today, many people do not accept the notion that marital rape is comparable to stranger rape, Eg, this article says:

Today there is considerable evidence that marital rape is still perceived as a lesser crime than other forms of rape within our culture and some studies have found a significant number of participants still question whether it is possible to rape one’s wife (Whatley, 2005; Kirkwood & Cecil, 2001). In a recent study of attitudes among college students, Monson, Byrd and Langhinrichsen-Rohling (1996) found that marital rape was perceived as less serious than rape perpetuated by a stranger and only 50% of the male students thought that it was possible for a husband to rape his wife.

There are some feminists who argue that marital rape is worse than stranger rape. Most people disagree.

Fast food and liver damage

Here is a science scare story about fast food:

Diets high in fast food can be highly toxic to the liver and other internal organs, but that damage can be reversed, says one of the country’s leading experts on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, who offers four steps to undo the effects of a 'super-size me' diet.

Late in the story we learn:

etri is quick to emphasize that fast food per se doesn’t causes liver damage. Rather, he says, the harm comes from eating too many calories and ... “The big issue here is caloric content,” says Tetri.

Yes, calorie content. If you go on a super-size movie diet where you double your calories eaten and avoid all exercise, then you will gain weight and have other health problems. The mice is the study displayed an increase in liver enzymes.

The article suggests avoiding fast food, but the research doesn't really show that fast food is any worse than any other food with the same calories.

Here is a funny cartoon about bacon being bad for your health. In reality, bacon is good for you.

Fat is good for you

Men's Health magazine reports:

What if Bad Fat is Actually Good for You?

For decades, Americans have been told that saturated fat clogs arteries and causes heart disease. But there's just one problem: No one's ever proved it

The article traces efforts since 1953 to prove that eating saturated fats causes heart disease. I suspect that millions of people have died younger because of this bad advice.

Smarter ladies have worse sex

The UK Sun newspaper reports:

BRAINY babes find it harder to have an orgasm – because they are too busy thinking, a study claims.

The German survey found that the more educated a woman was, the less likely it was that she would be satisfied by sex.

In the study 62 per cent of women who had completed their education said they often had problems achieving orgasm.

Only 38 per cent of women with a lower educational qualification said they had such problems.

The study conducted by a German lifestyle website surveyed over 2,000 women between the ages of 18 and 49.

I always thought that the brainy women are able to complete their education because they have fewer sexual distractions.

Detecting liars by facial expressions

Here is some new mindreading research:

How can we tell who’s lying, who’s not? New research out of Stephen Porter’s Forensic Psychology Lab at Dalhousie University determines the face will betray the deceiver’s true emotion, but not in the stereotypical ways we think. It’s not the shifty eyes or sweaty brow or an elongated nose (à la Pinocchio) the lie detector should look for. Instead, other elements of a liar’s face will give them away – “cracking” briefly and allowing displays of true emotion to leak on to the face. In fact, when Porter and his team analyzed White’s plea frame by frame, they found hints of anger and disgust in his face, not noticed by most of the supportive public.

Others have reported similar results. I am not sure if I believe it or not.

Why we have lousy math teachers

The left-wing San Jose Mercury News newspaper has this editorial:

California faces a shortage of math and science teachers, ...

Paying these teachers more makes sense under the law of supply and demand. College graduates with math and science majors can choose from many lines of work - accountant, researcher, financial analyst - more lucrative than teaching. And if they do want to teach, they gravitate toward higher-performing schools.

But what would seem an obvious solution in the private sector is prohibited in K-12 schools in California. Under a standard union contract, teachers in all subjects must be paid on the same salary scale. ...

The CTA believes that all teachers, like assembly-line workers, should be paid the same wage. It argues that a "two-tier pay structure" will "corrode the morale and overall effectiveness of all the teachers at the site." That view ignores the needs of struggling children and the competition in the job market for math and science majors.

The result is that we have overpaid teachers who do not know how to teach math and science.

New definition of rape

News from Baltimore MD:

The state's highest court ruled yesterday that a man can be charged with rape if he ignores a woman's calls to stop - even if she had previously consented to sex.

With this expansion of the legal definition of rape, Maryland joins seven other states whose courts have determined that a woman can revoke her consent after intercourse begins. ...

The victim testified in Montgomery County court that she agreed to sex "as long as he stops when I tell him to." As he began, she told him to stop because he was hurting her, but he kept going for five or 10 seconds, she said.

When a boy is a victim of statutory rape, he gets punished by a special tax that makes him pay 25% of his income to the state for the next 18 years:

A 12-year-old kid has sex with 16-year-old girl ..., the girl gets pregnant, goes on welfare, and the state welfare agency sues the father (now 13 years old) for reimbursement of the welfare money paid to the girl.

The Supreme Court of Kansas upheld the judgment against the 13-year-old kid. The Court wrote that the State's interest in requiring minor parents to support their children overrode its interest in protecting juveniles from their improvident acts, even when such acts might include criminal activity. ... many states have followed this decision.

These laws seem crazy to me. The next time that you hear that some guy is paying child support, remember that he might have been a statutory rape victim. The next time you hear some man is a rape, remember that his only crime may have been that he took five seconds to do what the girl asked.

Reason to fear the outside world

ABC News reports:

Bruce Perry, a child psychologist, testified that the traditional foster care system could be destructive to children taken from the sect's ranch. But he also testified that the children could be at risk if they are returned to the ranch.

Perry said the raid of the compound is a "very unique situation" and that the foster care system would be "destructive" to the children. ...

"So much of what they do out there is wonderful. But there is a part of what they do that is very destructive," Perry testified. He said he wished the sect's leaders wouldn't teach their children to be so fearful of the outside world.

After 416 kids were seized, I'd say that their fears were well-grounded.

Letting rich people use their money

Freakonomics blogger Daniel Hamermesh writes:

On the demand side, however, allowing people to bid for organs seems repugnant to me. (I do not want livers — except perhaps foie gras — on eBay!) Ethically, it seems wrong to let richer people move to the front of queues for scarce organs (to let the market implicitly value their lives more than those of poorer people).

Wrong? The rich people move to the front of every other line. I think that it is a little strange when people say that rich people can use their wealth to buy almost all goods and services, but not certain others.

Decisions take time

Here is some new mindreading research:

In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them. ...

Haynes updated a classic experiment by the late Benjamin Libet, who showed that a brain region involved in coordinating motor activity fired a fraction of a second before test subjects chose to push a button. Later studies supported Libet's theory that subconscious activity preceded and determined conscious choice -- but none found such a vast gap between a decision and the experience of making it as Haynes' study has.

In the seven seconds before Haynes' test subjects chose to push a button, activity shifted in their frontopolar cortex, a brain region associated with high-level planning. Soon afterwards, activity moved to the parietal cortex, a region of sensory integration. Haynes' team monitored these shifting neural patterns using a functional MRI machine. ...

Hallett doubts that free will exists as a separate, independent force.

This is consistent with previous research, but it does not cast any doubt on free will. It just shows that it takes a few seconds to make a conscious decision.

I have noticed this myself while riding my bike. If I see a hazard in the road, I can slam on the brakes as fast as my reaction time will allow. Reaction time is usually a tenth of a second or so. But if I see something interesting on the side of the road and have to make a deliberate decision on whether to stop, then the decision takes a few seconds. I can only make a decision faster than a second if I had already prepared a programmed response.

Reading faces for lust

Here is some new UK mindreading research:

A new study by U.K. researchers found that you can tell just by looking at someone’s face whether they’re interested in casual sex or long-term commitment. ...

Both men and women who participated in the study thought that the more attractive women would be interested in something short-term, and they were right ...

If you’re more attractive, people might expect you to have more partners. And more often than not, we fulfill those expectations people have of us. ...

Because of the effect those expectations have on our behavior, our first impressions about people turn out to be right, says Keating.

“Physical appearance cues tell us more about people than we’re even consciously aware of,” Keating says. “So in fact, we do judge a book by its cover. And the funny thing is, it often works for us.”

There is no unconscious assessments or mindreading. I think that people are conscious of who is attractive and who is not.

Boys Will Be Boys, Even Among Monkeys

The Discovery Channel reports:

The notion that children's taste in toys might somehow be genetically determined has long been disparaged by psychologists -- pooh-poohed as unscientific, sexist or both.

But a study by researchers in the United States suggests that when it comes to choosing between trucks and cuddly stuffed animals, chromosomes could make a difference. ...

So a team of scientists led by Kim Wallen of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, Georgia decided to offer typical "male" and "female" toys to rhesus monkeys to see if preferences aligned with sex.

Much to their surprise, they did. The 11 male monkeys headed straight for the wheeled toys, such as dump trucks, leaving the plush toys more-or-less unmolested. The 23 females were more curious, and played with both.

"They are not subject to advertising. They are not subject to parental encouragement, they are not subject to peer chastisement," said Wallen.

This should not be a surprise to anyone with small kids.

CD is digital

The NY Times reports:

People with a history of buying alternative rock music on Amazon, for example, may find the site pitching them the new R.E.M. album, “Accelerate,” in both CD and digital form.

Both? Anything in CD form is also in digital form. All CDs are digital.

Females give ambiguous signals

Here is some psychology research:

Males are apparently clueless when it comes to interpreting sexual intent from females, according to a recent study (PDF) from Indiana University's Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Men were found commonly to perceive more sexual intent in women's behavior than women were intending to convey. (A campus survey showed that 68% of college females had an experience where a male mistook signs of friendliness for affection.) However, the study also shows that men were quite likely to misperceive sexual interest as friendliness. 'Rather than seeing the world through sex-colored glasses, men seemed just to have blurry vision of sorts, overall,' according to the article. If you're a male who ever mistook the meaning of a barista's smile, looks like you're not alone.

The main point of this seems to be that men are not just oversexualizing signals, and that seems to be a valid point. But why is it being reported that the men are clueless, when it is the women who are putting out the ambiguous signals? It makes more sense to say that the women are clueless about communicating their intentions.

The study really had no way of knowing whether anyone's intentions had been miscommunicated. Everyone knows anecdotes where a girl smiles at a boy, the boy asks her out for a date, and the girl turns him down. The usual interpretation is that the boy misinterpreted the girl's signal. But it is much more likely that the girl was being deliberately ambiguous. She also could have wanted the boy to think that she was interested in a date, even if she had no such interest.

Dr. Helen also commments on this.

Children do not have consensual sex

Jacob Sullum writes on a libertarian site:

This 20/20 story aired a couple weeks ago, but I missed it: John Stossel tells the tale of a Texas man condemned to a life of stigmatization as a "sex offender," lumped in with child molesters and serial rapists, because he had consensual sex with his not-quite-16-year-old girlfriend when he was a 19-year-old high school senior.

No, a 15-year-old Texas girl did not have "consensual sex". It is impossible for her to do that until she reaches the age of consent.

Some comments suggest that there is some difference between the legal and common definitions of "consent". Even if there is, it is the legal definition that is relevant here. An article would not say that someone was convicted of premeditated murder if he were really convicted of manslaughter. In this case, the man was convicted of nonconsensual statutory rape, and it is wrong to say that he was convicted of consensual sex.

Faulty rules blamed for gun's firing

Inadequate handgun rules designed by Department of Homeland Security officials are to blame for last weekend's accidental discharge of a pistol by a commercial pilot during landing preparations, a pilots association said yesterday.

"The pilot has to take his gun off and lock it up before he leaves the cockpit, so he was trying to secure the gun in preparation for landing, while he was trying to fly the airplane, too," said David Mackett, president of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance. "In the process of doing that, the padlock that is required to be inserted into the holster pulled the trigger and caused the gun to discharge." ...

Pilots who have completed training to become federal flight deck officers (FFDOs) and carry weapons must use a holster used primarily as a home child-safety lock. A padlock is inserted through the holster and trigger guard, but, if inserted backward, it can trigger the gun, pilots say.

In other news of TSA stupidity:

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) today stood by its decision to require a Texas airline passenger to remove a nipple ring with pliers before boarding a flight, but says more discreet screening procedures may allow the sensitively placed piercings to be worn in the future.

"TSA acknowledges that our procedures caused difficulty for the passenger involved and regrets her discomfort with the situation," said TSA spokesman Christopher White.

"In the future, TSA's procedures will meet the security need while giving additional flexibility for this kind of screening situation," Mr. White said. "This could include a visual inspection without removal."

The pilots should not be using trigger locks, and TSA should ignore the nipple rings.

Cheerleading is not porn

The Sacramento Calif Bee newspaper reports:

Gilbert Chan, a business reporter at The Bee, pleaded not guilty Friday to a felony charge of possession of child pornography.

Chan, 52, of Davis was arrested after trying to conceal a camera he was using to videotape a youth cheerleading competition at UC Davis on Feb. 3, police said.

Yolo County prosecutors filed a complaint alleging a single felony count of possessing obscene matter depicting sexual conduct of a person under 18.

Chan's lawyer, Steven Sabbadini, questioned the charge. "What he did was film fully clothed cheerleaders during a public performance," he said. "The question is whether that fits the definition of child pornography."

I am getting the impression that most child porn charges are bogus. This case is an insult to cheerleaders.

Here is another California story about an overreaction to an innocent and harmless teacher:

SOUTH PASADENA - District officials are investigating an incident in which a substitute teacher allegedly reprimanded a student inappropriately, authorities said Friday.

Police were called to South Pasadena Middle School on Wednesday following a report that a teacher had assaulted a child, said Cpl. Craig Cooper of the South Pasadena Police Department.

After investigating, police closed the case, determining no abuse had occurred, Cooper said.

The teacher "used the tip of her finger and patted (the student) on the forehead," Cooper said. "She was all, `Come on, you, you can do better than that."'

School officials, who also made a complaint to Los Angeles County child services representatives, are continuing to look into the case, said South Pasadena Unified School District Superintendent Brian Bristol.

"There was a substitute teacher that engaged in conduct that we consider to be physically and verbally assaultive," Bristol said, declining to confirm details about the alleged forehead-tapping.

"She made a poor choice, and we do not tolerate that. Such conduct is unacceptable," Bristol said of the teacher, adding that she will not be allowed to teach in the district again.

The school officials lack common sense. Many other states allow teachers to spank the students.

Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene

Here is a funny video about gay scientists looking for a Christian gene.

I am not sure what point the producer was trying to make. It looks like a parody of Christian scientists looking for a gay gene. But I thought that it was mainly gay scientists who promote the gay gene theory. Maybe it is a parody of gay scientists looking for a gay gene.

I am not sure which is more ridiculous, a gay gene or a Christian gene. Most behavior is some complex combination of nature and nuture, as far as anyone knows.

Japanese mindreaders

Here is a new study:

How do you know how someone is feeling? For people in Western societies, it is usually easy: look at the person’s face.

But for people from Japan and other Eastern societies, a new study finds, it may be more complex — having to do not only with evaluating the other person’s face but also with gauging the mood of others who might be around.

The differences may speak to deeply ingrained cultural traits, the authors write, suggesting that Westerners may “see emotions as individual feelings, while Japanese see them as inseparable from the feelings of the group.”

In other words, oriental mindreader don't just focus on one mind; they try to read a bunch of minds at once. Perhaps orientals conform to their group more because no one notices their individuality anyway.

Happy marriage and blood pressure

AP reports:

A happy marriage is good for your blood pressure, but a stressed one can be worse than being single, a preliminary study suggests.

That second finding is a surprise because prior studies have shown that married people tend to be healthier than singles, said researcher Julianne Holt-Lunstad. ...

Analysis found that the more marital satisfaction and adjustment spouses reported, the lower their average blood pressure was over the 24 hours and during the daytime.

But spouses who scored low in marital satisfaction had higher average blood pressure than single people did.

The study is not freely available.

I don't see how they can conclude that a happy marriage causes low blood pressure. Maybe it is the opposite -- that low blood pressure causes marital happiness. Maybe people with low blood pressure are less irritable and easier to get along with.

Holt-Lunstad said her next step was to study couples participating in marriage counseling to see if improvement in the marriage translates into improved health.

While she is at it, maybe she should test whether blood pressure lowering drugs improve happiness in marriage.

Here is another new study:

Stressed parents aren't just damaging their own health - they may also be making their children more vulnerable to illness.

Stress is well known to affect a person's own physical health, but the effect on their children's health was unclear. To investigate, Mary Caserta and her colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York asked the parents of 169 children aged between 5 and 10 to monitor their child's health over three years, recording symptoms of illnesses and taking their temperatures. ...

Caserta's team found that the total number of illnesses, both with and without fever, was significantly higher in the children of parents who reported high levels of emotional stress.

Okay, maybe the stress is causing illness, but it seems just as likely to me that the parents are stressed out because their kids are sick all the time.

Hillary has a female agenda

From the Fox News TV channel:

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: What is the downside of having a woman become the president of the United States? ...

RUDOV: ... The main problem I have is if a woman has a female agenda. If she doesn't have a female agenda, if she just wants to be an executive for all the people, then all I care about is if she's qualified. And I have no qualms about having a female president.

But if we take Hillary Clinton, she specifically does have a female agenda. All you have to do is look at her Web site. Now let's go back a couple of months to around January 11, where she was campaigning in Las Vegas, and a man from the crowd — and you can check this out on the Internet — a man from the crowd yelled out, "Please help me. My wife is an illegal." And her response was, "No woman is an illegal." And that's exactly what I mean by a female agenda. ...

But Hillary embodies the female agenda. She wants to be the feminist in chief. She represents women. It says so on her Web site. And a lot of women are voting for her because she's a woman. ... Contrast that with Barack Obama.

Not any more. Obama is now running as a black man with a black agenda. He desperately wants to identify with blacks who are always whining about alleged injustices that happened decades ago, and blaming white America for everything. He even blamed his white grandmother for harboring racist thoughts after some rude black man hassled her while she was waiting for a bus. All the pundits are praising Obama's recent speech on race, but I think that it was a disaster for his campaign. Those who think that it would be wonderful to elect a president who transcends race will have to look for a new candidate.

Update: Obama clarifies (with audio here):

The hosts asked Obama about his speech at the Constitution Center.

They zeroed in on comments he made about his white grandmother and her racial phobias.

"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity," he said. "But she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know. . .there's a reaction in her that doesn't go away and it comes out in the wrong way."

He needs to shut up.

Indian outsourcers get all the H-1B visas

Business Week mag reports:

Guess Who's Getting the Most Work Visas
Indian outsourcers top the list of companies bringing foreign workers to the U.S. on the H-1B program

Overall, six of the top 10 visa recipients in 2007 are based in India; two others among the top 10, Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTSH) and UST Global, are headquartered in the U.S. but have most of their operations in India.

Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) are the only two traditional U.S. tech companies among the top 10. Microsoft received 959 visa petition approvals, or one fifth as many as Infosys, while Intel got 369.

Man accused of 200 rapes

Penn. crime news:

BELLEFONTE, Pa. — A man raped a woman nearly 200 times over a 13-month period at her home and his, threatening to cause her further harm if she ever told her husband or police, authorities said.

Roy Chamberlin, 29, would regularly sneak into the woman’s house after her husband left for work, then rape her, police said. ...

When she finally did talk with police, she said one alleged assault occurred just nine days after she had undergone surgery. She went to the emergency room and was treated for a bruised chest.

The woman’s husband told police he saw bruises on his wife about two dozen times and arrived home early one day in June to find her yelling at Chamberlin with the door locked.

Confronted by her husband, the woman declined to discuss the encounter, and her husband said he dropped the issue because of his wife’s ailing health, police said.

The husband said he also confronted his wife after an encounter at Chamberlin’s house, but the woman again declined to talk about it.

That is not rape. She had an affair with the man, and is now calling it rape to save her marriage.

Mom faces trial for leaving toddler in car

The AP reports:

CHICAGO - Treffly Coyne was out of her car for just minutes and no more than 10 yards away.

But that was long and far enough to land her in court after a police officer spotted her sleeping 2-year-old daughter alone in the vehicle; Coyne had taken her two older daughters to pour $8.29 in coins into a Salvation Army kettle.

Minutes later, she was under arrest — the focus of both a police investigation and a probe by the state’s child welfare agency. ...

The 36-year-old suburban mother is preparing to go on trial Thursday on misdemeanor charges of child endangerment and obstructing a peace officer. If convicted, she could be sentenced to a year in jail and fined $2,500, even though child welfare workers found no credible evidence of abuse or neglect.

This sounds like a joke, but it is yet another example of our nanny state having gone too far.

Blaming cyclists is part of tragedy

A letter to the editor of the local paper says:

Once again, we hear the tragic news about cyclists killed on the road (Page 1A, March 10), and once again, the tone of the article implies that it is the cyclists' fault. Toward the end of this otherwise fine article, we read the following.

Cyclists along the well-traveled stretch of road talked Sunday about the dangers of their sport - everything from speeding cars to drivers who blare their horns in an attempt to intimidate them. One of the most dangerous things cyclists can do, they said, is ride two abreast. That practice is not illegal but can be extremely dangerous on narrow, winding roads with a large amount of traffic.

So, a sheriff's car crosses a double-yellow line and plows into a group of cyclists, killing two of them, and what we read is sympathy for the distraught driver, and words that shift the blame to the dead and injured cyclists, with absolutely no evidence presented that they were doing anything wrong. This is appalling.

Mark Flynn
San Jose

The paper says the cop fell asleep:

Sunday morning around 10:30 a.m. Council crossed a double yellow line on Stevens Canyon Road and struck a group of cyclists in the opposite lane. Matt Peterson, 29, of San Francisco, and Kristianna Gough, 30, of Oakland, died.

Daniel Brasse was the first to come on to the scene of Sunday's crash. There was no screech, no bang - no noise to warn bicyclist Brasse about what was coming around the corner.

A sheriff's patrol car was facing the wrong way on the wrong side of the road after slamming into Brasse's three riding partners. A deputy was walking around in a daze, later telling at least two witnesses he had fallen asleep.

Peterson was already dead. Another of Brasse's friends, Christopher Knapp, 20, was writhing in agony, with two limbs broken. And Gough, her leg severed and her head bleeding, was gasping for air.

As far as anyone knows, the bicyclists were riding in a safe and legal way. It is a lightly traveled road, and there is no bicycle lane.

Women lag in the physical sciences

Christina Hoff Sommers writes:

Math 55 is advertised in the Harvard catalog as “prob­ably the most difficult undergraduate math class in the country.” ...

Math 55 does not look like America. Each year as many as 50 students sign up, but at least half drop out within a few weeks. As one former student told The Crimson newspaper in 2006, “We had 51 students the first day, 31 students the second day, 24 for the next four days, 23 for two more weeks, and then 21 for the rest of the first semester.” Said another student, “I guess you can say it’s an episode of ‘Survivor’ with people voting themselves off.” The final class roster, according to The Crimson: “45 percent Jewish, 18 percent Asian, 100 percent male.” ...

Professor was soon everywhere in the press and on April 8, 1999, was invited to attend an Equal Pay Day event at the White House. Referring to Hopkins and her team, President Clinton said, “Together they looked at cold, hard facts about disparity in everything from lab space to annual salary.”

But cold, hard facts had little to do with it. After reviewing the available evidence and interviewing some insiders, University of Alaska psychologist Judith Kleinfeld con­cluded, “The MIT report presents no objective evidence whatsoever to support claims of gen­der discrimination in laboratory space, salary, research funds, and other resources.” Readers are told in the summary report that women fac­ulty “proved to be underpaid.” we also learn that the “salary data are confidential and were not provided to the committee.” So on what basis did they conclude there were salary dis­parities? Hopkins and the other authors explain, “Possible inequities in salary are flagged by the committee from the limited data available to it.” But “possible” soon became “actual,” and by the time it reached President Clinton it had morphed into “cold, hard facts.”

The article describes misguided attempts to use Title IX methods to get more women into the hard sciences.

Today's NY Times has a review today of Susan Pinker's new book on the gender gap.

Woman on dumb women

The Wash Post published this amusing rant:

What is it about us women? Why do we always fall for the hysterical, the superficial and the gooily sentimental? Take a look at the New York Times bestseller list. At the top of the paperback nonfiction chart and pitched to an exclusively female readership is Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love." Here's the book's autobiographical plot: Gilbert gets bored with her perfectly okay husband, so she has an affair behind his back. Then, when that doesn't pan out, she goes to Italy and gains 23 pounds forking pasta so she has to buy a whole new wardrobe, goes to India to meditate (that's the snooze part), and finally, at an Indonesian beach, finds fulfillment by -- get this -- picking up a Latin lover!

This is the kind of literature that countless women soak up like biscotti in a latte cup: food, clothes, sex, "relationships" and gummy, feel-good "spirituality." This female taste for first-person romantic nuttiness, spiced with a soupçon of soft-core porn, has made for centuries of bestsellers -- including Samuel Richardson's 1740 novel "Pamela," in which a handsome young lord tries to seduce a virtuous serving maid for hundreds of pages and then proposes, as well as Erica Jong's 1973 "Fear of Flying."

Then there's the chick doctor television show "Grey's Anatomy" (reportedly one of Hillary Clinton's favorites). Want to be a surgeon? Here's what your life will be like at the hospital, according to "Grey's": sex in the linen-supply room, catfights with your sister in front of the patients, sex in the on-call room, a "prom" in the recovery room so you can wear your strapless evening gown to work, and sex with the married attending physician in an office. Oh, and some surgery. When was the last time you were in a hospital and spotted two doctors going at it in an empty bed?

I swear no man watches "Grey's Anatomy" unless his girlfriend forces him to. No man bakes cookies for his dog. No man feels blue and takes off work to spend the day in bed with a copy of "The Friday Night Knitting Club." No man contracts nebulous diseases whose existence is disputed by many if not all doctors, such as Morgellons (where you feel bugs crawling around under your skin). At least no man I know. Of course, not all women do these things, either -- although enough do to make one wonder whether there isn't some genetic aspect of the female brain, something evolutionarily connected to the fact that we live longer than men or go through childbirth, that turns the pre-frontal cortex into Cream of Wheat.

A feminist replies:

A far more important question is this: Why did The Post publish this nonsense? I can't imagine a great newspaper airing comparable trash talk about any other group. "Asians Really Do Just Copy." "No Wonder Africa's Such a Mess: It's Full of Black People!" Misogyny is the last acceptable prejudice, and nowhere more so than in our nation's clueless and overwhelmingly white-male-controlled media.

She says a male editor should have been "afraid of being seen as a total caveman".

Why the Oscars stunk

I think I figured out why the recent movie Academy Awards (Oscars) got such lousy TV ratings. Of the 113 nominations, only 8 of those went to movies that were among the top 10 money-grossing movies of 2007.

The most popular movie to win a prize was The Bourne Ultimatum, but it just won obscure editing prizes. The next most popular movies to win prizes were Ratatouille, a Disney cartoon, and Juno, a very annoying feminist message move. I criticized Juno below.

I think that people want to see their favorite movie stars win prizes. If they cannot, then there is no point to watching the Oscars.

Truth about gals' serial fibbing

The NY Post reports:

Most females lie "more cleverly and successfully than men" about everything from infidelity and facelifts to barhopping and shopping binges, according to a new book. ...

Barish said a Rockland County woman stripped of her secrets on Fox TV's reality show "Moment of Truth" last week proves her research true.

Lauren Cleri, 26, admitted on air she had cheated on her NYPD cop husband and preferred an ex-boyfriend. But she failed a polygraph, and lost $200,000, by answering "yes" when asked if she believed she was a good person.

"It supports my thesis that women are talented at lying - but perhaps not enough to pass a lie-detector test," Barash said.

That TV shows seems to have taken reality-show humiliation to a new level. Some reality shows portray people trying to accomplish something; others just try to humiliate people. There must be a lot of people who enjoy others being humiliated.

This research is biased, but I think that it is correct that women lie a lot more than men do.

More comments on Dr. Helen's blog.

Bonds transcript released

The Barry Bonds grand jury transcript has been released, and it includes gems like this:

Q. Just to follow-up on the grand juror's question, is that -- if you're giving gifts of $15,000 or $20,000 a year to individuals, is that something that you declare on your tax returns as a gift?

A. I didn't declare it on my tax returns at all, no. Because they didn't want to have to pay tax on it. I'm thinking: "Fifteen grand, whoop-de-doo. You know, slap me on the hands, and I'll pay my taxes on it."

I suppose a lot of people are going to read this, and decide that Bonds is a jerk. But I read this, and wonder what justification the grand jury had for asking questions like this. It appears to me that the DAs were just trying to set a perjury trap for Bonds.

Bicycles and the Law: The Case of California

Here is a good summary of California bicycle law, by Alan Wachtel. A lot of people seem to think that bikes have to ride on the shoulder, or have to get out of the way of cars, or cannot occupy an entire lane. In reality, bikes have more or less the same road rights as cars. Other states have similar laws.

Leak site back online

Wired reports:

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge on Friday allowed whistle-blower site WikiLeaks to resume operation in the United States, a week after ordering its U.S. hosting company and domain registrar to shut down and lock the renegade's site from the internet.

The judge conceded the futility of attempts to censor information, in this instance private banking records, after it has been posted to the internet. ...

The judge held a hearing here Friday to reconsider his initial decision because federal law required it, and because he was having second thoughts. "There are serious questions of prior restraint, possible violations of the First Amendment," he said from the bench. (Hours later, he issued this ruling.)

New bogus claim of spanking harm

USA Today reports:

Children whose parents spank them or otherwise inflict physical punishment may be more likely to have sexual problems later, according to research to be presented Thursday to the American Psychological Association.

The analysis of four studies by Murray Straus, co-director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire-Durham, suggests that children whose parents spanked, slapped, hit or threw objects at them may have a greater chance of physically or verbally coercing a sexual partner, engaging in risky sexual behavior or engaging in masochistic sex, including sexual arousal by spanking.

"It increases the chances of sexual problems," though "it's not a one-to-one causation," Straus says.

No, it is not. According to the article, 85% of USA kids have been spanked. In an unpublished survey on dating violence, 12.5% of students "likely to insist that their partner have unprotected sex" said that they have never been hit.

That 12.5% is not significantly different from the 15% of the general population who have not been spanked. This is bogus research from an 81-year-old sociology professor who has made a career out of ideological opposition to spanking. This latest research has not even been published. The new media should ignore it.

For some research that is favorable to spanking, see this.

USA Today quotes another anti-spanking zealot:

Elizabeth Gershoff, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, who reviewed 80 years of spanking research in 2002 in the APA's Psychological Bulletin, says Straus' work appears to be the first to link spanking with sexual problems.

Gershoff says that though many children have been spanked (85% in one 2007 survey), problems may depend on how they process the spanking.

"They may internalize that to mean that in loving relationships sometimes there's pain or physical aggression," she says. Another possible lesson is that "whoever is stronger and has more power can overpower the other person and use physical aggression to control the other person's behavior."

Yes, it is true that the strong can overpower the weak. That is a lesson that all kids need to learn.

Look at spending, not income

A NY Times op-ed says:

The top fifth of American households earned an average of $149,963 a year in 2006. As shown in the first accompanying chart, they spent $69,863 on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, transportation, health care and other categories of consumption. The rest of their income went largely to taxes and savings.

The bottom fifth earned just $9,974, but spent nearly twice that — an average of $18,153 a year. ...

So, bearing this in mind, if we compare the incomes of the top and bottom fifths, we see a ratio of 15 to 1. If we turn to consumption, the gap declines to around 4 to 1.

Why men do not teach

Here is why we have so few men teaching elementary school:

When Dan Brown began teaching fourth grade at Public School 85 in the Bronx as an NYC Teaching Fellow, he quickly realized he was one of the few male teachers at the school. ...

But his role came with an added responsibility not many female teachers face. "Only two kids out of the 26 had parents who were married," he said. "Most of these kids had no father figure at home. To come to school and have that male authority figure who was treating them respectfully made a huge difference." ...

According to statistics recently released by the National Education Association (NEA), men made up just 24.4 percent of the total number of teachers in 2006. In fact, the number of male public school teachers in the U.S. has hit a record 40-year low. ...

Many men once in the profession say they quit because of worries that innocuous contact with students could be misconstrued, reports the NEA. ...

"There's a lack of support for male teachers, a lack of respect, and a lack of being able to be involved in decision-making," said Reg Weaver, president of the NEA. "And I can't say it's getting better." ...

"People will ask you inappropriate questions," he said, recalling a recent e-mail he received from an aspiring male teacher who was asked during a job interview, "Why would any healthy male want to work with kids?"

Trivial action gets sex crime conviction

Portland Oregon news:

A Washington County jury found Rodriguez guilty in 2005 of first-degree sexual assault after police accused her of running her hands through a 13-year-old boy’s hair and pulling the back of his head against her covered chest in the middle of a crowded game room at the Boys and Girls Club in Hillsboro.

Under Measure 11, a 1994 voter-approved ballot initiative setting mandatory minimum sentences, Rodriguez faced six years and three months in prison.

This is more evidence overcriminalized sex offenses.

The college rape myth

Heather Mac Donald writes in an LA Times op-ed:

It is a central claim of these organizations that between a fifth and a quarter of all college women will be raped or will be the targets of attempted rape by the end of their college years. ...

If the one-in-four statistic is correct, campus rape represents a crime wave of unprecedented proportions. ...

Such a crime wave -- in which millions of young women would graduate having suffered the most terrifying assault, short of murder, that a woman can experience -- would require nothing less than a state of emergency. ...

None of this crisis response occurs, of course -- because the crisis doesn't exist.

That's right, it is all a big hoax.

Lesbian domestic violence

Glenn Sacks reports:

Dutton cited one study of 1,100 lesbian or bisexual women who are in abusive lesbian relationships. The study, which was conducted in Phoenix, found that the women were more likely to have experienced violence in their previous relationships with women than in their previous relationships with men.

Dutton explained that in general research shows that domestic violence is more common in lesbian relationships than in heterosexual relationships.

Some people just don't believe that women can be responsible for domestic violence, even tho all the studies say they are to blame as much as men.

California school expenses

The California schools are complaining loudly about school budget cuts. Here is a chart of the actual K-12 school expenses over the last 25 years.

I got the data from here. I combined Department of Education and "General Obligation Bonds - K-12". It does not include college expenses or Contributions to Teacher's Retirement Fund. It also does not include federal money, which has been increasing under No Child Left Behind.

As you can see, even with the cuts, K-12 spending is still much more than it was just three years ago.

Stuff white people like

There is a blog called Stuff white people like that brilliantly lampoons white people. I recommend it.

California deficit

California politicians are complaining about a budget deficit, but here are the actual state government revenues in recent years.

My source is the California Legislative Analyst's Office. As you can see, revenues have increased from $72 billion to a projected $103 billion.

Obesity does not cause cancer

The Junk Food Science blog explains that current research shows that fat people don't get cancer any more than anyone else, contrary to what you might have read.

Bernie Ward sex chat released

The police report on left-wing San Francisco talk show host Bernie Ward has been released. (See also the copy on TMG.) In Dec. 2007 it was announced:

The indictment, which was returned on Sept. 20, 2007, and unsealed today, alleges that between December 2004 and January 2005, Ward received images of child pornography on his computer. Ward is also charged with two counts of knowingly distributing images of child pornography that had been mailed, shipped, and transported in interstate commerce by means of a computer.

Ward faces a maximum of 20 years in prison on each count, a $250,000 fine, and a lifetime term of supervised release.

The pictures don't sound that bad, and prosecuting him for distributing child porn seems excessive. But the sex chat transcript makes him sound like a real pervert, and his story about having the child porn to research a book on hypocrisy is obviously a lie. Particularly disturbing are the references to his underage kids.

Ward is a failed Catholic priest, a Bush-hater, and a tool of the angry Left. He had his own "God Talk" radio show with his own peculiar theology. He would sanctimoniously attack the Catholic Church, conservatives, and Republicans at every opportunity. He would subscribe to every wacky leftist conspiracy theory, if it suited his ideology. I don't know if he was really writing a book on hypocrisy, but he was always accusing right-wingers of hypocrisy.

At least no one will have to listen to his stupid hypocrisy rants anymore.

Poll on singles not dating

A new Pew poll concludes:

Whatever the reasons, few of today's seeking singles describe themselves as active on the dating scene.

Here is a possible reason:

More than one in three single women confessed to having someone they can call for no-strings-attached sex.

This is a little-known secret of today's dating scene. Many women maintain these NSA relationships without even their closest friends knowing.

Fast food improves blood cholesterol

Here is some new diet research:

PARIS (AFP) - A month-long diet of fast food and no exercise led to dangerously high levels of enzymes linked to liver damage, in an unusual experiment inspired by the docu-movie "Supersize Me."

But investigators, reporting their findings on Thursday, were also stunned to find that a relentless regimen of burgers, fries and soda also boosted so-called good cholesterol, seen as a key measure of cardiovascular health.

Researchers in Sweden asked 12 men and six women in their twenties, all slim and in good health, to eat two meals per day at McDonalds, Burger King or other fast-food restaurants over four weeks.

The volunteers were also told to refrain from exercising. The goal was to increase body weight by 10 to 15 percent to measure the impact of an abrupt surge in calorie intake.

Roger Clemens testifies

The case against Roger Clemens seems very weak to me. The statistical evidence proves nothing.

A couple of congressmen seemed to think that it was incriminating that Clemens' buddy Andy Pettitte accused him of using HGH, and Clemens was unwilling to call him a liar. Clemens merely said that Pettitte was mistaken.

I disagree. Even if Pettitte was not mistaken, it is telling that his accusation was very weak. He had no knowledge of Clemens using steroids. If Clemens had confided with his buddy about HGH, wouldn't he also be likely to confide in steroid use?

Even if Clemens did use HGH briefly in 1999, I don't think it is any big deal. HGH doesn't even help a pitcher much, as far as I know. I don't see any smoking gun. Clemens should be innocent until proven guilty.

Winning the nomination without a plurality

Whoever wins the Democrat nomination, I just hope that the winning candidate gets a majority of the delegates, but fails to get a plurality of the popular vote. Then we'll have a bunch of Democrats arguing with Democrats about what a fair election is.

Since 2000, Democrats have complained about the USA President not being decided by a plurality of the popular vote. But the Democrats do not even use the popular vote to determine their own nominee.

Diet soda makes you fat

The LA Times reports:

Casting doubt on the benefit of low-calorie sweeteners, research released Sunday reported that rats on diets containing saccharin gained more weight than rats given sugary food.

The study in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience found that the calorie-free artificial sweetener appeared to break the physiological connection between sweet tastes and calories, driving the rats to overeat.

Lyn M. Steffen, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota, who was not involved in the latest report, said the study offered a possible explanation for the unexpected association between obesity and diet soda found in recent human studies.

If confirmed, this would be another example of conventional diet wisdom being wrong.

Amsterdam’s War on Sex

Newsweek reports:

Amsterdam plans to close down its most famous district, citing sleaze, criminal activity and human trafficking. ... Amsterdam’s mayor, Job Cohen, and his aldermen have demonstrated little nostalgia for the district, which has been the world’s most famous home of sexual permissiveness since the 15th century. They first unveiled the plan to close it in December; last month they revoked the licenses of two widely known sex venues, the Casa Rosso and the Banana Bar.

You can still buy dope there, as far as I know.

Gaydar research

AAAS Science Mag reports:

Talk about "gaydar." In just a fraction of a second, people can accurately judge the sexual orientation of other individuals by glancing at their faces, according to new research. The finding builds on the growing theory that the subconscious mind detects and probably guides much more of human behavior than is realized. ...

Ambady and colleague Nicholas Rule, both at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, wondered about sexual orientation. They showed men and women photos of 90 faces belonging to homosexual men and heterosexual men for intervals ranging from 33 milliseconds to 10 seconds. When given 100 milliseconds or more to view a face, participants correctly identified sexual orientation nearly 70% of the time.

I am not sure this study proves anything. Maybe 20 out of the 90 had haircuts that match stereotypes.

Scottish government drafts Cat Welfare Code

The UK Register reports:

The Scottish government has tackled the thorny issue of cat welfare by issuing a Draft Cat Welfare Code of Practice aimed at providing "basic information and guidance to those responsible for cats on how to care for them".

This exhaustive document contains essential info for those Scots who aren't feline-savvy, such as the revelations that "different cats will have different needs", inquisitive moggies may end up in tumble dryers and that nine lives won't save your pet from if it falls from your sixth-floor balcony.

There's more. Apparently, to keep your cat healthy, it is "essential to provide it with a nutritionally balanced diet from early in its life" (ie, meat, and plenty of it, with the occasional fish and a half-a-dozen songbirds a year).

The govt do-gooders have way too much time on their hands.

Chiral osculators

SciAm reports:

Psychologist Onur Güntürkün of the Ruhr-University of Bochum in Germany recently surveyed 124 couples kissing in public places in the U.S., Germany and Turkey and found that they tilted their heads to the right twice as often as to the left before their lips touched. Right-handedness cannot explain this tendency, because being right handed is four times more common than is the act of kissing on the right. Instead Güntürkün suspects that right-tilted kissing results from a general preference that develops at the end of gestation and in infancy. This “behavioral asymmetry” is related to the lateralization of brain functions such as speech and spatial awareness.

I think that his logic is flawed. If a right-hand kisser were a little more likely to tilt to the right, then that would explain the data.

It's almost impossible

CBS News reports:

Another sign of just how close the Democratic race is: Both Clinton and Obama received 6,001 votes in the city of Syracuse, according to preliminary results. According to Syracuse University mathematics professor Hyune-Ju Kim, the odds of that happening are less than one in one million. "It's almost impossible," Kim said.

His math is wrong. There is at least one chance in a thousand of such a tie in Syracuse, depending on your assumptions. With a lot of cities voting, ties like this are not so surprising.

Update: This statistician also explains it.

Crack found where?

A news site had an inadvertantly funny headline 6 days ago, and already it is on 15,000 web pages.

Why men run from commitment

A forensic psychologist writes:

Why do today’s men run from commitment — indefinitely delaying settling down in a marriage they take seriously, and having kids? Dr. Helen Smith asks whether they are indeed pampered eternal adolescents more interested in exploding toilets and video games than real life. ...

Nowadays, for many men, the negatives of marriage for men often outweigh the positives. Therefore, they engage in it less often. Not because they are bad, not because they are perpetual adolescents, but because they have weighed the pros and cons of marriage in a rational manner and found the institution to be lacking for them. It’s a sensible choice for some and the video games, magazines, and humor websites that Hymowitz disses are a way to fill one’s time with fun activities that don’t tell you that you suck, are an “unfinished person,” emotionally detached or on your way to jail for fake domestic violence charges. People used to treat men better than this.

Read this the next time you hear some female shrink complain about the Peter Pan Syndrome.

Update: Here is an inflammatory comment on it:

I gagged at the first paragraph of that woman's nonsense. She's a single woman with a child. Traditionally, most men would not want to form a life with her.

I have a 29-year-old son. He has known forever that I would NEVER, ABSOLUTELY NEVER under any circumstances, accept as a "pretend grandchild" the child of some other man.

A couple of years ago, it was clear that he had adopted my standard when he said that he would NEVER marry a woman who had a child by another man. I asked, "How about if she had been widowed?" ... His answer was simple: "I don't care what her story is."

The woman who wrote the Atlantic piece made her own selfish choices; let her deal with them without the pity that she seeks in her article. She created a child who would forever have no access to the financial, familial, or emotional support of a father. If that isn't selfish and intentionally abusive, what is?

Any man who would opt to form a life with that woman would be either (1) resigning himself to never having children, or (2) damning his own future children to reduced paternal support and assistance because he would be taking on the task of "pretend father" to the child whose father is an unknown.

The actions and attitudes of the woman author disgust me.

Heath Ledger dies of accidental overdose

Hollywood news:

NEW YORK -- The medical examiner has concluded that actor Heath Ledger's death was an accident, and the result of the abuse of prescription medications.

The medical examiner released results of the toxicology report Wednesday, saying Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of six drugs, including pain killers, sleeping pills, and anti-anxiety drugs.

The six drugs found in his system were oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine, the medical examiner's office said.

The drugs are the generic names for the OxyContin painkiller, the anti-anxiety drug Valium, Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, and the sleep aids Restoril and Unisom. Hydrocodone is another name for the better-known Vicodin. ...

The actor, 28, was found face down and naked on his bed at 3:26 p.m. by his housekeeper.

His housekeeper had entered Ledger's room to let him know that a masseuse had arrived for an appointment, police said.

Police sources said investigators found two bottles of sleeping and anti-anxiety pills at the apartment.

While not a marquee movie star, Ledger was a respected, award-winning actor who chose his roles carefully rather than cashing in on his heartthrob looks. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as a gay cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain," where he met Michelle Williams, who played his wife in the 2005 film. The two had a daughter, now 2-year-old Matilda, and lived together until they split up last year.

The death was a shocking and unforeseen conclusion for one of Hollywood's bright young stars.

Unforeseen? Somebody had to know that his life was a mess. Who prescribed all those pills?

Fat People Cheaper to Treat

Here is a new study:

LONDON (AP) -- Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives, but it doesn't save money, researchers reported Monday. It costs more to care for healthy people who live years longer, according to a Dutch study that counters the common perception that preventing obesity would save governments millions of dollars.

I think that the study just looks at medical savings. There would be additional saving if you consider Social Security payments.

Multiple wives will mean multiple benefits

The UK London Telegraph reports:

Husbands with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits following a year-long Government review, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Even though bigamy is a crime in Britain, the decision by ministers means that polygamous marriages can now be recognised formally by the state, so long as the weddings took place in countries where the arrangement is legal.
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The outcome will chiefly benefit Muslim men with more than one wife, as is permitted under Islamic law. Ministers estimate that up to a thousand polygamous partnerships exist in Britain, although they admit there is no exact record.

The article says that the polygamous Mohammedans have been collecting welfare for a couple of years, even tho polygamy is illegal.

Women use lingerie to impress each other

Denmark news:

His findings: when selecting lingerie, the hierarchies of the dressing room play just as much a role as the intrigues of the bedroom when determining what lingerie women purchase.

Østergaard found that women use lingerie as a means for exploring other sides of their personality in addition to merely looking sexy for their mates. Lingerie essentially provides a means for exploring and defining a social identity.

According to Østergaard's findings, women continually size up each other's undergarments in public spaces to evaluate whether they fall within accepted norms. ...

'Men get their impression of undergarments through the media and have quite a stereotypical idea of what is sexy,' said Østergaard. 'But a lot of the lingerie that men see on fashion models doesn't necessarily look as good on their girlfriends at home. She knows that, but he doesn’t.'

This is more evidence that women are harder to understand than men.

Watching football causes heart attacks

The Junkfood science blog writes:

The Super Bowl, and all spectator competitive sports, may be a thing of the past, in accordance with current public health policies. A new study has found such sporting events are associated with a 326% increase in cardiac emergencies among men and nearly a doubled risk among women. These are actual myocardial infarctions and cardiac arrhythmias, not surrogate endpoints for heart problems. For those with heart disease, the risks are twice those of people without a history of heart problems.

He argues that banning the Super Bowl makes about as much sense as banning transfats.

Vegetarianism proves to be perversion of nature

Pravda reports:

Vegetarians can be referred to as true fanatics. On the other hand, they are seriously misled in their beliefs. Practically nobody argues with them, since it is really difficult to convince a vegetarian of his or her self-deception. May be that is the reason why the vegetarian movement develops so actively around the globe and continues to recruit many new members. ...

Vegetarians, especially those of advanced age, usually face numerous health problems that are mainly caused with the shortage of animal protein. ...

Furthermore, cosmetologists say that a typical vegetarian has dry and fragile hair, dull eyes and unhealthy complexion. They can hardly stand criticism and have a low boiling point. They raise their voice, swing their arms and splutter when arguing. They are weak even in their logic. They exemplify their righteousness with the cow, a herbivorous animal, and say that nature originally made a human being as a vegetarian creature.

Pravda used to be a commie propaganda paper. I don't know what it is now.

Teachers: don't say mom and dad

The London UK Daily Mail reports:

Teachers should not assume that their pupils have a "mum and dad" under guidance aimed at tackling anti-gay bullying in schools.

It says primary pupils as young as four should be familiarised with the idea of same-sex couples to help combat homophobic attitudes. ...

When discussing marriage with secondary pupils, teachers should also educate pupils about civil partnerships and gay adoption rights. ...

Teachers should avoid telling boys to "be a man" ...

At the same time, schools should encourage gay role models ...

Next month is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month, where pupils learn about apparently gay figures from history including Leonardo da Vinci, Oscar Wilde and James Dean.

This means that usage of the word "gay" will be tightly policed. Certain usages will be promoted, while others will be punished.

Unusual killer mug shot

Here is a Penn. story:

Torres was driving on Turner Street Friday afternoon when he was pulled over by police and arrested. He was wearing a hooded sweartshirt with a skull-head pattern on it, pajama bottoms and fuzzy lion-faced slippers at the time. He was still wearing the get-up when he was arraigned after midnight at Lehigh County prison. ...

Police have not said how they came to suspect Torres in the shooting deaths of Carlos Collazo, 32, and Jorge Camacho, 36, both of Allentown. But in an affidavit filed in court, police said Torres told them that he and another man had been looking for Collazo and Camacho, and that Torres admitted to killing both.

The cops probably decided that Torres's appearance matched the profile of a murderer. Lock him up!

Prominent psychiatrist ordered to seek help

Psychiatrists commonly prescribe drugs to treat various anti-social behaviors, and downplay the adverse consequences. So what happens when a shrink deviates from the party line on drug treatments? She gets orders to see a shrink herself, in order to coerce her into adopting conforming opinions! From a major Australian newspaper:

Prominent psychiatrist ordered to seek help
Louise Hall Health Reporter
January 27, 2008

A PSYCHIATRIST known as a "hired gun" in court cases has been ordered into treatment by medical authorities after being accused of a dubious diagnosis.

Yolande Lucire has been reprimanded by the NSW Medical Board after its professional standards committee disagreed with a diagnosis she made in a medico-legal case and questioned her professionalism.

The eastern suburbs forensic psychiatrist is well-known in legal circles and her testimony in a criminal trial last year sparked a NSW judge to slam doctors for creating a generation of "Ritalin kids", who were now committing violent crimes.

Dr Lucire said she could not defend herself because of a non-disclosure order, but said the matter "did not relate to patient care". She can continue to practise. ...

The medical board took issue with her diagnosis of residual organic hallucinosis in a patient and she was ordered to see a board-approved senior psychiatrist "for the purpose of seeking and taking advice with a view to improving some aspects of her practice of medicine".

If the shrinks could have their way, anyone with an unorthodox view would be ordered into psychotherapy to be reeducated. And being unorthodox is only measured by the wacky standards of the shrinks, not society at large.

Books that make you dumb

Someone has cleverly used Facebook data to chart books that make you dumb. The idea is to get correlations between average college SAT and popular book preferences. The smart students are reading Lolita while the dumb ones read the Bible.

No sex in marriage

The UK Daily Mail reports:

Carrie Jones hasn't had sex with her husband Hal, a City banker, for the past four years. Nor does she want to. Sex is something she can no longer summon the effort to endure - with the man she married, at least.

She admits she stays in her sexless relationship for the sake of her children, aged nine and 11, and will remain celibate until the day they are grown up and she feels able to leave. At which point, she confesses, she will probably abandon her husband and begin a sexual odyssey to find the satisfaction that eludes her. ...

So convinced is Carrie that her experience of sex in marriage - initially pleasant, dwindling to nothing at all after having children - is a universal one that she has just written a book, under an assumed name, highlighting the disappointment of her sex life. ...

So what of her sexual history? It seems that Carrie wasn't always this uninterested in sex. She admits to having 23 lovers before she married.

"Ten were proper boyfriends," she recalls. "I regretted having sex with six of them, loved three of them but only one of the 23 ever gave me an orgasm.

"As I entered my thirties, it was obvious my sex life had a recurring, rather depressing pattern: intense desire to begin with followed, if the relationship survived long enough, by a slow winding down into indifference.

There is a woman with a serious attitude problem. She needs treatment, not a book tour.

Recidivism rates

A WSJ columnist reports:

Meanwhile, the existing research raises tough questions about the relative danger child molesters pose to society. Their likelihood of being convicted for a crime after release is much lower than average for all criminals released from prison, and even for all sex offenders, at least in the short term, as measured by a Bureau of Justice Statistics study and others.

A lot of people assume that sex offenders can never be cured, and child molesters must be locked up for life because they have the highest recidivism rates of all crimes. I think that we have some public policies based on some bad data.

Male ego is larger than IQ

From an interview of a London psychology prof:

NEWSWEEK: Many studies show that men score slightly higher in IQ tests. Is this significant?
Adrian Furnham: Universally, men tend to score higher on certain specialized skills, such as spatial awareness. In the real world, that means they might be better at reading maps or navigating. Women score higher in terms of language development and emotional intelligence. But most experts agree there is no real, important overall difference when it comes to gender and intelligence.

But women think they aren't as smart as men?
That's the conundrum. What I study is "perceived intelligence," essentially how smart people think they are. I analyzed 30 international studies, and what I found was that women, across the world, tend to underplay their intelligence, while men overstate it.

So do most men think they're Albert Einstein?
There certainly is a greater male ego. It's what we call the male hubris and female humility effect. Men are more confident about their IQ. These studies show that on average, women underestimate their IQ scores by about five points while men overestimate their own IQs. Since these studies were international in scope, the results were essentially the same whether women were from Argentina, America, Britain, Japan or Zimbabwe. Another factor affecting perception may be distribution of IQ ... Although [men and women] are on average the same, the people at the very top and the very bottom of the IQ bell curve are more likely to be men. That is a pattern that we see in the university setting, with men either being at the very top of the class or at the bottom.

Do women tend to think that men are smarter than they are?
Surprisingly, [both] men and women perceive men being smarter across generations. Both sexes believe that their fathers are smarter than their mothers and grandfathers are more intelligent than their grandmothers.

It would indeed be surprising if people all over the world are so wrong about
their own parents.