Study finds supertaskers

CBS News reports:

A new study by University of Utah psychologists on the ability of people to operate a motor vehicle and talk on a cell phone ...

Reaction to hit the brakes was slowed 20 percent. Drivers also failed to keep pace with traffic, as following distances increased 30 percent. Their performances in memorization declined (by 11 percent), and math performance dropped as well (by 3 percent).

Yet for the "supertaskers," there was no change in their braking times, following distances or mathematical ability - and their memory improved by 3 percent.

Researchers found this small group of "supertaskers" also displayed better performance when performing a single task than did the rest of the subjects.

Maybe the DMV driving test should test for multitasking. Those who can do it are probably safer with the legal right to use cellphones.

Men must now buy maternity insurance

Most men have probably ignored the health care insurance abortion debate, because they don't need abortion insurance anyway. But now that changes. Men will not only have to buy abortion insurance, they will have to buy maternity insurance:

Until now, it has been perfectly legal in most states for companies selling individual health policies — for people who do not have group coverage through employers — to engage in “gender rating,” that is, charging women more than men for the same coverage, even for policies that do not include maternity care. The rationale was that women used the health care system more than men. ...

In addition, individual policies often excluded maternity coverage, or charged much more for it. Now, gender rating is essentially outlawed, and policies must include maternity coverage, considered “an essential health benefit.”

Some people say that more health insurance will save money, because increased preventive care will cut more expensive treatments later. But the truth is just the opposite:

And the new health care legislation, he says, is not going to make a bit of difference.

To truly change the nation’s chronic overuse of medical care, there will have to be a substantial change in the way patients think about health care, how medicine is practiced and how it is paid for, economists and doctors say.

The legislation does little to help in those areas.

Most preventive care is not really cost-effective, so it is inevitable that it will be rationed, now that everyone expects to get it for free.

Women seek mental health treatments much more than men, and the new law has a big payoff for them:

Even without the new health care law, mental health advocates were getting ready to celebrate parity — a law requiring benefits for substance abuse and mental illnesses to be on par with benefits for medical illnesses. ...

Now mental health advocates are almost giddy. The law signed by President Obama last week expands parity to a much wider pool, making it possible for millions more people to get the same coverage for substance abuse and illnesses like bipolar disorder, major depression and schizophrenia as they would for, say, diabetes or cancer.

So I'll also have to pay for mental health insurance that I do not want or need.

I suspect that millions of Americans may decide that it makes more sense not to buy that health insurance for things they don't need. They can wait until they get sick, and then take advantage of the inability of insurance companies to look at pre-existing conditions.

Insurance used to mean paying a big company to take the risk of uncertain accident or illness. That concept is dead. Now it means paying for either the medical conditions you already have, or the ones you will never have.

Innumerate math teachers

A Psychology Today article writes:

In an article published in 2005, Patricia Clark Kenschaft, a professor of mathematics at Montclair State University, described her experiences of going into elementary schools and talking with teachers about math. In one visit to a K-6 elementary school in New Jersey she discovered that not a single teacher, out of the fifty that she met with, knew how to find the area of a rectangle.[2] They taught multiplication, but none of them knew that multiplication is used to find the area of a rectangle. Their most common guess was that you add the length and the width to get the area.

This is pathetic, but widespread. Elementary schools just don't believe in hiring the sort of teachers who are interested in math. They would probably drop math altogether, if they could get away with it. Math is on the standardized tests, so they have to keep it. They just teach it badly.

Why babies get fat

The NY Times reports:

Babies whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are at risk of becoming obese, even though the babies are usually small at birth.

Babies who sleep less than 12 hours are at increased risk for obesity later. If they don’t sleep enough and also watch two hours or more of TV a day, they are at even greater risk.

It seems unlikely to me that these things really cause obesity. Maybe it is a simple matter that those who do not follow health guidelines tend to smoke and get fat, but there is no direct relationship between a mom smoking and a baby getting fat. There could also be genetic reasons for a correlation. I expect that official health guidelines will list these things as causes of childhood obesity, but they are more likely to be spurious correlations.

New research indicates HFCS may be causing obesity:

When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight.

That quote is from a psychology professor. I would think that medical researchers could figure stuff like this out, but I guess they are too busy doing retrospective cohort studies.

Attacks on the Pope

The NY Times has another page one story attacking the Catholic Church. This one is titled, Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest.

Apparently there were some allegations against a Milwaukee priest in 1974, and the Church transferred him elsewhere. Additional action was considered in 1996, before the priest died in 1998. The paper reports:

But Cardinal Bertone halted the process after Father Murphy personally wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger protesting that he should not be put on trial because he had already repented and was in poor health and that the case was beyond the church’s own statute of limitations.

Leftist-atheist religion-haters are going nuts with this, such as Hitchens.

This is ridiculous. It is a complaint about how someone 14 years ago may or may not have handled something that may or may not have happened 36 years ago. It is not possible to find out the facts. Whatever happened, it could not have been that bad, or someone would have complained before now. The only reason anyone is complaining now is that there are some opportunistic lawyers in Wisconsin who are suing for a lot of money. Maybe the complainers just made the allegations up in order to collect millions of dollars in court.

There are reasons why we have statutes of limitations. There are also reasons for a presumption of innocence. Nothing good is going to come out of this story.

It is disturbing how people uncritically accept these dubious accusations. It is somewhat similar to how the news media has accepted wacky stories of Toyota runaway acceleration, even tho the last one was shown to be a hoax.

Reality show is scripted

The NY Post reports:

A teen ex-beauty queen is suing Disney and the TV show "Wife Swap" for $100 million -- charging that they intentionally ruined her life by making her look like a spoiled brat, exposing her to "ridicule, mockery and derision." ...

And while the show claims to be reality, many of its sequences were scripted, the suit alleges.

I guess the kid can sue because she was under age during filming, and now she is over 18 and not bound by contract. Mockery is much of the purpose of these shows.

This study claims to explain why skinny models are so popular with women:

According to a new study by the University of Arizona, ads featuring bigger models don’t actually make most women feel very good about themselves. Apparently, pretty much everything makes women feel like crap about how they look.

According to the researchers, larger women feel better about themselves when ads don’t include any models at all, average-sized ladies actually have lower self-esteem after looking at ads with plus-sized models rather than uber-skinny ones, and thin folk prefer the traditional tiny models.

Teen prankster arrested for racial joke

The NY Times reports:

WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP, N.J. — The authorities in southern New Jersey said Saturday that they had arrested a 16-year-old boy for activating a public-address system at a Wal-Mart store last week and ordering “all black people” to leave.

The boy, from Atlantic County, was charged by Gloucester County authorities with bias and intimidation and harassment in connection with the episode last Sunday. If convicted, he could face up to a year in a juvenile detention center, officials said. His name was not released because he is a minor.

According to the police, the boy picked up a public-address telephone in the Wal-Mart in Washington Township, one of two dozen accessible to the store’s customers, and said, “All black people, leave the store now.” ...

Investigators also scoured Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, and found postings, including some that the police chief said involved “kids bragging” about what happened.

With the help of anonymous tipsters, he added, investigators were led to the suspect, who was arrested Friday.

I can see why Wal-Mart is embarrassed, but what is the crime?

Wal-Mart could easily prevent this sort of thing if it wanted to. It could turn of the system when not in use. Apparently it has a store full of video cameras, but they did not record this.

The black people in the store did not leave, and assumed that it was a joke.

If no one was harmed, then what was the crime? Is rude behavior in a Wal-Mart now illegal?

I also heard this story reported on the radio. This is only news because some editors think that it is funny. So how are these editors better than that teenager? He risked offending a couple of black folks in the store, while the editors risk offending millions of blacks.

In other teen crime news:

In most states, teenagers who send or receive sexually explicit photographs by cellphone or computer — known as “sexting” — have risked felony child pornography charges and being listed on a sex offender registry for decades to come.

But there is growing consensus among lawyers and legislators that the child pornography laws are too blunt an instrument to deal with an adolescent cyberculture in which all kinds of sexual pictures circulate on sites like MySpace and Facebook.

The problem here is that there are draconian penalties for behavior that today's teenagers see as harmless fun. The authorities are going to have to convince the teenagers that it is harmful, change the law, or prosecute a lot of kids.

Odd national origin options

I am filling out my US Census form, and I find several things odd. I have the short form, with only ten questions.

There is no question about my citizenship, or one that directly asks for my national origin, but there are about 25 national origins lists. None apply to me, and I have never even heard of some of them. I can say that I am Korean, but I cannot say that I am American or even French.

It separates race from being Hispanic, which makes sense, but what box do they expect non-white Mexicans to check? My guess is to check both "white" and "American Indian" to indicate mixed ancestry, but the latter asks for a tribe name, and Mexicans don't have that, as far as I know.

Only one answer is boldface, and that is the "No" for not being Hispanic. Is that for people who are emphatically not Hispanic?

What ever happened to the oriental race? There is no Caucasian race either anymore. It appears that the entire sub-continent of India has been kicked out of the white race.

The Census web site does not explain any of this. You cannot even file your census response online.

More evidence that copyright is broken

From an unofficial Google watcher:

The truth is difficult to find if those that know it have a lot to lose when it's revealed. Three years after Viacom sued YouTube for 1 billion dollars, some pieces of truth are revealed:

"For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. " ...

"... The team told senior Google execs that YouTube was a "rogue enabler" of content theft, that its content is all free, and much of it is highly sought after pirated clips and that YouTube's business model is completely sustained by pirated content. " ...

Google will probably have to pay millions of dollars, because YouTube would have never taken off without that pirated content. And yet hardly anyone sees anything wrong with it.

Differences between men and women

Funny columns today on the differences, from a man:

Men move the discussion forward. Women swap recipes and beauty tips.
Men debate. Women wheedle.
Men confront. Women slander.
Men act. Women plot.
Men invent. Women benefit.
Men are passionate. Women are passion parasites.
Men cheat. Women betray.

and a woman:

Guys seek thrills and speed. They go for the adrenalin rush. They get pumped by going higher, faster, farther than anyone else. They want lots of action and instant gratification. That's also why guys like blogging – instant opinions, and lots of them.

Prize for Poincare conjecture solution

Today's math news:

The Clay Mathematics Institute (CMI) announces today that Dr. Grigoriy Perelman of St. Petersburg, Russia, is the recipient of the Millennium Prize for resolution of the Poincaré conjecture.

Math is the only academic subject who people get credited for what they actually do, and not for self-promotion. Perelman has dropped out, and done nothing to promote his work. He just posted it, and lectured on it.

Poincare discovered and published relativity theory before Einstein, and most physicists refuse to credit him to this day.

Update: Pravda claims that Perelman does not want the money. He is not talking, so nobody really knows.

Update: As of July 2, 2010, Perelman has refused the prize.

Female prison guard misconduct

Here is a weird story about sex in prison, with the authorities having trouble figuring out who is raping whom. AP reports:

HELENA, Mont. — Inmate Michael Murphy sought out female guards and prison workers that he knew would be easy to charm.

He started by seeking a small favor, which could lead to a kiss or love letters. In at least five cases, he convinced women to have sex with him or perform other significant illegal favors.

And yet Michael Murphy is considered the victim in each case, because inmates cannot legally consent to sex.

In each of those cases, the female corrections employees were caught, shamed and forced out of a job, according to documents detailing an investigation by Montana prison officials and obtained by The Associated Press after an open records lawsuit.

The women officers described Murphy as the aggressor, even as the predator. But that makes no difference in either state or federal penitentiaries, where prison employees — male or female — are the violators if they have sex with inmates.

A Justice Department study shows that cases like Murphy's are common: Female staff are more often implicated than their male counterparts in prison sexual misconduct. ...

The therapist, for instance, told internal investigators that from the start that she knew she had been manipulated and compromised.

"And then he kissed me one day in my office and I just thought, 'What the f--- did I just do, what just happened?'" she said in a 2008 interview she was told would be confidential. "From that point on I just, I felt like I couldn't do anything, I couldn't say no to him, I couldn't get myself out of it. It's like he had that over me, and he continued to push."

Wow, a female prison therapist cannot control herself any better than that?

Neanderthal med student article

An article by 24-year-old med student Brent Thoma drew this response:

"I can only hope that he is sincere in his decision to forgo a career in Family Medicine, thereby sparing countless future female patients the agony of having to deal with his apparent Neanderthal tendencies," one professor wrote. Several letters were subsequently sent to the journal defending the student.

At least one member of the public has also written to Canadian Family Physician demanding an apology and retraction.

"Congratulations on publishing the most offensive, insensitive article ever," wrote Grace Sanchez MacCall, a business owner from Toronto.

In an interview, Ms. Sanchez MacCall understood that the article addresses a legitimate issue. "But the way it was addressed, using humour ineptly, was completely inappropriate and had no place in being legitimized by a professional association's journal," she said.

The article obviously struck a nerve, as it appeared several months ago and people are still complaining about it.

Mohammedan history lesson

Nobody wants to explain Mohammedanism, but check out this video: Colonel Allen West Answers a Marine's Question.

Marriage expert debunked

John Gottman claims to have a method of analyzing marriage, but this article shoots it down:

Then, three to six years later, Gottman's team checked on the same couples' marital status and announced that based on the coding of the tapes, they could predict with 83 percent accuracy which ones were divorced. ...

Malcolm Gladwell devoted most of a chapter to him in his huge best-seller Blink. In a 2007 survey asking psychotherapists to elect the 10 most influential members of their profession over the last quarter-century, Gottman was only one of four who made the cut who wasn't deceased. "Many in the field now believe that most of what we know about marriage and divorce comes from his work," states an article accompanying the Top 10 list.

Sounds amazing, but the research is worthless. Andrew Gelman agrees that the claims are bogus.

This is another example of Gladwell's junk. He has sold millions of dollars worth of book with convincing explanations, but it is snake oil.

Making it hard to filter porn

Slashdot reports:

The Associated Press reports that the board of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has deferred a decision until June on whether to create a '.xxx' Internet suffix as an online red-light district, ... Backers of '.xxx' have billed the proposal as a way for the adult-entertainment industry to clean up its act, though some adult sites worry that governments would wind up mandating the use of '.xxx' and that sites with the '.xxx' suffix could easily be blocked by government web filters in the future.

If a .xxx top-level domain makes it easier to filter porn, so much the better. I think that laws ought to encourage the hard-core porn to get over to .xxx.

There are always civil-liberties types who complain that filtering should not be easy, because that encourages censorship. I think that is backwards. We should have the liberty to easily reject the porn, if we want.

Yes, I imagine that most employers will block the .xxx domain on company computers. Workers are not being paid to watch porn. Okay with me. There is no shortage of porn on the internet.

Swiss voters reject animal lawyers

AP reports:

GENEVA – The result was emphatic: Swiss voters don't think abused animals need to have their own lawyers. ...

Official results showed that 70.5 percent of voters cast their ballot against the proposal to extend nationwide a system that has been in place in Zurich since 1992. Some 29.5 percent of voters backed the proposal, with turnout at just over 45 percent.

According to the country's only animal lawyer, Antoine F. Goetschel, public prosecutors are often unsure about animal rights and shy away from pursuing cases ...

Most of his clients are dogs, cows and cats, Goetschel told The Associated Press in a recent interview. Many cases involve the serious abuse of animals, such as deliberate wounding, rape and neglect.

But in one high-profile case last month, Goetschel represented a dead pike after an animal protection group accused the angler who caught it of cruelty for taking 10 minutes to haul the fish in.

The angler was found not guilty.

This article is not a joke. A Swiss lawyer represented a dead pike fish. 30% of the Swiss voted for this nutty law.

I am waiting for Switzerland to get its second animal lawyer. Then they can sue each other when one rabbit rapes another.

Popular Science

Popular Science (Monthly) magazine has put its old issues online. Popular Science (Monthly) magazine has put its old issues online.

A 1952 letter confronts Einstein with his bogus claims about creating a unified field theory. Einstein. Einstein denies any responsibility for his publicity-seeking behavior, and then gives some doubletalk excuses. His theories were garbage.

A 1929 story updates an experiment that led to relativity theory. The trouble with this is that Einstein denied that the experiment had anything to do with his work on relativity. It was only used by those who actually invented relativity.

The magazines are complete with the original ads, which are unlike any ads today.

Publishing phony facts

You would think that a writer's career might be damaged by this NY Times book review:

If Charles Pellegrino weren't so shamelessly self-promoting, it might be O.K. to let this book drift into oblivion past the icebergs that it ought to hit. But he quotes himself in epigraphs, invents friendships with famous people and claims scientific authority for a work that flouts most principles of scientific scholarship. He shouldn't get away with it.

But he got another book published, and it is getting worse treatment:

In the case of “The Last Train From Hiroshima,” the author, Charles Pellegrino, said he had been duped by a source and insisted that other sources the publisher questioned definitely existed. ...

Mr. Pellegrino said he had relied on information from a source, Joseph Fuoco, who claimed he was a last-minute substitute as a flight engineer on one of the escort planes for the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Late last month, scientists, historians and veterans denounced Mr. Fuoco as an impostor who did not ride on the mission. ...

Mr. Pellegrino said he had been awarded the doctorate at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand in the early 1980s and then stripped of it a few years later because of a disagreement with department members over evolutionary theory. “It got to be a very hot and nasty topic in 1982,” Mr. Pellegrino said in a telephone interview. ...

In a telephone interview Mr. Pellegrino talked repeatedly of his supporters, including Stephen Jay Gould, who died in 2002, but who, according to Mr. Pellegrino, knew that he had been academically persecuted.

Earlier, this book got a rave review in the NY Times.

I guess that it is impractical for most publishers and book reviewers to do any fact-checking.

Iceland rejects debt repayment

Iceland has voted overwhelmingly against a plan to repay some unusual and excessive debts created by its bank. This is great. How can we vote to repudiate debt?

California has a constitution requiring a balanced budget, and yet we have accumulated vast amounts of debt.

I think that we need a new California constitution amendment to limit debt. It should say that no session of the legislature should be obligated to pay a debt burden created by a previous session.

I particularly object to debt created by unbalanced budgets and unfunded pension plans.

Someone might argue that such an amendment would interfere with federal law on the enforcement of contracts, but I don't think so. California would just have to put a clause in its contracts that state obligations are limited by constitutional spending authority. If some state agency signs a contract with a union saying that employees can retire at 95% of full salary with annual increases, then a clause would have to say that the pension payments could be limited by what is in the fund and what some future legislature decides to appropriate. It should be legally impossible for the state to guarantee a pension greater than that.

As it is, we have thousands of state bureaucrats retiring on six-figure pensions, and they are bankrupting the state. The politicians who made these promises are gone and no one is accountable.

Publishers reject cold submissions

The WSJ reports:

In 1991, a book editor at Random House pulled from the heaps of unsolicited manuscripts a novel about a murder that roils a Baltimore suburb. Written by a first-time author and mother named Mary Cahill, "Carpool" was published to fanfare. Ms. Cahill was interviewed on the "Today" show. "Carpool" was a best seller.

That was the last time Random House, the largest publisher in the U.S., remembers publishing anything found in a slush pile. Today, Random House and most of its major counterparts refuse to accept unsolicited material. ...

It used to be that you could bang out a screenplay on your typewriter, then mail it in to a studio with a self-addressed stamped envelope and a prayer. Studios already were reluctant to read because of plagiarism concerns, but they became even more skittish in 1990 when humorist Art Buchwald sued Paramount, alleging that the studio stole an idea from him and turned it into the Eddie Murphy vehicle, "Coming to America." (Mr. Buchwald received an undisclosed settlement from Paramount.)

She makes it sound as if Paramount got burned by a chance similarity to an unsolicited manuscript. In fact, Paramount had a signed contract with Buchwald, made the movie with his plot, and cheated him out of his share of the $288M in earnings.

Female US ship captain fired

Time magazine reports:

... booted as captain of a billion-dollar warship for "cruelty and maltreatment" of her 400-member crew. According to the Navy inspector general's report that triggered her removal — and the accounts of officers who served with her — Captain Holly Graf was the closest thing the U.S. Navy had to a female Captain Bligh.

A Navy admiral stripped Graf of her command of the Japan-based guided missile cruiser U.S.S. Cowpens in January. The just-released IG report concludes that Graf "repeatedly verbally abused her crew and committed assault" and accuses her of using her position as commander of the Cowpens "for personal gain." But old Navy hands tell TIME that those charges, substantiated in the IG report, came about because of the poisonous atmosphere she created aboard her ship.

The article goes on to give examples of her using profanity to sailors, including those who had gone to her for personal advice.

I don't doubt that she is incompetent, and was only promoted because of misguided affirmative action policies. But is profanity really that upsetting to today's sailor? And why was anyone asking her for personal advice, if she were really a female Captain Bligh?

The complaints against Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty were things like cruelly flogging sailors for no reason. I don't recall sailors complaining about profanity and hurt feelings. I don't know how we can fight a war unless we have tougher sailors than this.

Counseling for the guilty

From today's Dear Abby:

DEAR ABBY: I lost my mom to cancer several months ago. She made my sister and me promise not to let her die in a hospital, ... Mom died three hours after we made our decision.

We also promised to bury her because she didn't want cremation. ...

Abby, Mom had two wishes at the end of her life, and I wasn't able to fulfill either one. ...

Now I'm having second thoughts. Was I wrong? Should you grant your parents their final wishes? I'm seeing a counselor about this, but would like your thoughts. ...

DEAR GRIEVING: ... You have done nothing wrong. Talking about this with your therapist is the surest way to work it through.

I am beginning to believe that counseling exists only to excuse bad behavior. The idea is that she will stop feeling guilty if some counselor tells her over and over again that she did nothing wrong.

Crime to find a coin

Apparently it is a crime in the UK to find a coin:

A woman who found a 700-year-old coin in her garden as a child has become the first person to be convicted of failing to hand in suspected treasure.

Kate Harding, 23, was prosecuted under the Treasure Act after she ignored orders to report the rare find to a coroner.

The article is a little misleading because the prosecution was based on the object being not really a coin, but some sort of coin-like metal token of unknown purpose. But still, why should it be a crime to find a piece of metal in your yard? And why tell the coroner? I thought that a coroner was an official who keeps track of dead bodies.

Rules of the playground

This sign shows a long list of playground rules. It is hard to read, but you will get the idea. It is hard for me to imagine how this sign really benefits anyone. I would just remove it, and put in a sign saying, "Have Fun. Use common sense."

Animal Abuse Registry

The NY Times reports:

California may soon place animal abusers on the same level as sex offenders by listing them in an online registry, complete with their home addresses and places of employment.

The proposal, made in a bill introduced Friday by the State Senate’s majority leader, Dean Florez, would be the first of its kind in the country and is just the latest law geared toward animal rights in a state that has recently given new protections to chickens, pigs and cattle.

These lawmakers and animal rights nuts have some really twisted values. I once had a friend tell me that I should not kill the mouse in my house, and I should instead capture it alive and find a good home for it.

At least they are going to pay for it:

Yet there is a "bite" to this bill. The cost for maintaining the Web site would be passed to consumers, specifically to dog and cat owners.

Every sack of dog chow and every morsel of cat food would be slapped with a tax, as much as 3 cents per pound.

From the same paper:

It is the latest weapon in Australia's seemingly endless battle against the cane toad, which was introduced from Hawaii in 1935 in an unsuccessful attempt to control beetles on sugarcane plantations. ...

Early cane toad killing methods included whacking the creatures with golf clubs or cricket bats. ...

Cane toads emit a poison that attacks the heart of would-be predators. ...

Australia's Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said encouraging ants to attack cane toads is inhumane.

Inhumane? These animal rights folks are just too crazy. The study is actually quite careful about the environmental consequences.

Pediatricians want redesigned hot dogs

USA Today reports:

Nutritionists have long warned of the perils of hot dogs: fat, sodium and preservatives to name a few.

Now, the American Academy of Pediatrics wants foods like hot dogs to come with a warning label — not because of their nutritional risks but because they pose a choking hazard to babies and children.

Better yet, the academy would like to see foods such as hot dogs "redesigned" so their size, shape and texture make them less likely to lodge in a youngster's throat.

These pediatricians are making fools of themselves.

Women athletes in Vancouver

The NY Times reports:

Ski jumping and the related sport of Nordic combined are the only events at the Winter Games that bar women from competing. ...

Ski jumpers fly the length of a football field or more at speeds of 50 to 60 miles per hour, and some women, like the American Lindsey Van, perform on par with men.

If she is really on a par with the men, why doesn't she compete against them? I didn't think that there was any rule against women competing against men. The sex tests have been abolished, anyway.

It seems to me that several of the events would be better if they let men and women compete without splitting the sexes anyway. Why are there separate men's and women's curling teams?

I thought this was a typo, but apparently ski jump champ Lindsay Van is no relation of the more famous ski champ Lindsay Vonn.

Duke stripper finally nailed

The NY Daily News reports:

The stripper who falsely cried rape and ruined the reputations of three Duke University lacrosse players was charged with trying to stab her lover, police said Thursday.

Cops responding to a 911 call found an out-of-control Crystal Gail Mangum battling her boyfriend and screaming, "I am going to stab you \[expletive\]."

The 33-year-old woman then tried to burn boyfriend Milton Walker's clothes in a bathtub, a Durham, N.C., police report states.

Mangum resisted being arrested and gave cops a false first name, Marella, and age, the report states.

Her three kids - ages 3, 9 and 10 - were in the house at the time but were not injured.

The exotic dancer was charged with attempted first-degree murder, five counts of arson, assault and battery, resisting arrested, child abuse and other offenses.

Whole books have been written on what is wrong with this story, so I have little to add. The biggest culprit was Judge Stephens, and he was never punished.

I named Mangum on this blog about a year before the press did. It seemed to me that there was plenty of evidence for the innocence of the Duke boys -- implausible accusation, airtight alibis, no witness id, negative DNA test, etc.

Bad poll on campaign financing

The Wash Post report:

Poll: Large majority opposes Supreme Court's decision on campaign financing

Americans of both parties overwhelmingly oppose a Supreme Court ruling that allows corporations and unions to spend as much as they want on political campaigns, and most favor new limits on such spending, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Eight in 10 poll respondents say they oppose the high court's Jan. 21 decision to allow unfettered corporate political spending, with 65 percent "strongly" opposed. Nearly as many backed congressional action to curb the ruling, with 72 percent in favor of reinstating limits.

The poll reveals relatively little difference of opinion on the issue among Democrats (85 percent opposed to the ruling), Republicans (76 percent) and independents (81 percent).

The results suggest a strong reservoir of bipartisan support on the issue for President Obama and congressional Democrats, who are in the midst of crafting legislation aimed at limiting the impact of the high court's decision.

No, the court did not decide to allow "unfettered corporate political spending". It upheld strict limits on campaign donations, and on foreign money.

The phrase "campaign financing" usually means the money that a candidate raises to spend on his political campaign. The court decision was not about that at all. It was only about money that corporations spend on their own.

The poll questions were:

35. Changing topics, do you support or oppose the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that says corporations and unions can spend as much money as they want to help political candidates win elections? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

36. Would you support or oppose an effort by Congress to reinstate limits on corporate and union spending on election campaigns? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat?

No, the corporations and unions cannot spend as much money as they want. They cannot spend the money on candidates. These questions do not match either the court opinion, or the story.

It would have been much better to ask a question about what the court actually decided. Eg, it could ask about the showing of an anti-Clinton movie a month before an election.

Political views are innate

Nicholas Kristof writes:

The researchers ... found that those who had a stronger blink reflex at the noise were more likely to take such conservative positions as favoring gun rights, supporting warrantless searches, and opposing foreign aid. ...

They start by exploring data showing a remarkably strong correlation between state attitudes toward spanking children and voting patterns. Essentially, spanking states go Republican, while those with more timeouts go Democratic.

Professors Hetherington and Weiler contend that the differences stem from profound differences in cognitive styles. Spankers tend to see the world in stark, black-and-white terms, perceive the social order as vulnerable or under attack, tend to make strong distinctions between “us” and “them,” and emphasize order and muscular responses to threats. Parents favoring timeouts feel more comfortable with ambiguities, sense less threat, embrace minority groups — and are less prone to disgust when they see a man eating worms.

This analysis has some obvious flaws, but there could be something to it.

Maybe one way to test it would be to look at how political views differ between the hard and soft sciences. Some fields depend on being able to make strong distinctions, and some do not. Maybe those who have difficulty making strong distinction are more likely to have certain political views and to be in the soft sciences.

White workers only 38%

Yesterday's Si Valley newspaper has this top story:

The unique diversity of Silicon Valley is not reflected in the region's tech workplaces — and the disparity is only growing worse.

The story goes on to say that whites are hogging 38% of the computer and mathematical science jobs. The print edition has one of their largest headlines saying, "THE DIVERSITY DECLINE".

What kind of diversity do they want? It seems to me that the whole place has been taken over by non-whites and foreigners.

Regretting spinsterhood

In case you want marriage advice from someone who has never been married, read this:

Gottlieb’s piece, “Marry Him,” in the March Atlantic, makes the “case for settling for Mr. Good Enough.” Directing her message toward single women over the age of 30, she writes, “If you say you’re not worried, either you’re in denial or you’re lying.”

Gottlieb, who is 40 and single, regrets not having settled for a decent (albeit imperfect) guy years ago. But back then she subscribed to the “somebody isn’t always better than nobody” theory of marriage.

No, her attitude problem is much worse than that. She had an out-of-wedlock child because she decided that she did not need a husband.

I can't begin to detail the problems here, but this psychiatrist tries.

Supremacist judge rejects math textbook

An education blog reports:

In what seems like an unusual step by the judiciary, a judge in Washington state has ordered the Seattle school board to reconsider its choice of math materials for high schools across the district, reports the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"The court finds, based upon a review of the entire administrative record, that there is insufficient evidence for any reasonable board member to approve the selection of the Discovering Series," writes Judge Julie Spector from the King County Superior Court in her Feb. 4 decision.

The Seattle newspaper explains that last May, the board implemented a districtwide math curriculum called Discovering Math. Shortly thereafter, two parents and a University of Washington professor went to the King County Superior Court to overturn the board's decision and compel the district to consider other textbook options.

You can get details on the textbooks from the publisher here, and some of the legal documents here.

My initial impression is that these books would probably make for a more interesting class, with a good teacher. But with a lousy teacher, the kids are probably going to do worse on standardized exams.

But this judicial supremacist judge is way out of her league here. Her ruling shows no understanding of the books, except that they are "inquiry-based". There were allegations that they were "mathematically unsound", but she is unable to give an opinion on that. She only says that she finds that, as a matter of law, it was arbitrary and capricious to adopt the textbooks. Or maybe it is a finding of fact, she is not sure.

I guess that what give the court authority to intervene in such a matter is the argument that white kids can learn from an inquiry-based textbook, but that black and non-English-speaking minority kids cannot. Apparently the books are wordier and more colorful than the other books.

Mom thinks snow is dangerous

From Yahoo answers:

How do I convince my kids snow is dangerous?
we are supposed to get record snow where i am. i personally hate it. its cold and wet and cold. i know they are gonna make me play in it. i put them off last snow by telling them they had to clean their room before they could play in it. i dont think thats gonna work this time. how can i make them believe snow shouldnt be played in?

You should tie them to a chair in the basement and bombard them with images of Abominable Snowmen, Avalanches, horrible wipe outs on the bunny hill, etc. Then tell them that all the missing children in the world have gone missing because they played in the snow.....and that the Tooth Fairy, Santa, Easter Bunny and other misc. imaginary characters will never visit them again if they go out there. No kid can defy the laws of the Tooth Fairy. Problem Solved.

That kid is going to learn that "dangerous" is a euphemism for fun.

Guys who love grilled cheese

A burger chain is pushing an option for guys who love grilled cheese, but don't want to order from the kiddie menu:

“The origin of the new Grilled Cheese Bacon Burgers is actually kind of a funny story,” according to Brad Haley, executive VP of marketing at CKE Restaurants (parent company). “We were initially working on menu items we could offer for our vegetarian customers and made a really good grilled cheese sandwich. But, being Carl’s Jr., a chain known for its decadent burgers, someone suggested that we try it with a charbroiled burger patty and bacon for our carnivorous customers and the Grilled Cheese Bacon Burgers were born… It really delivers on the idea of a grilled cheese sandwich combined with a bacon cheeseburger… And we’ll still make a really good grilled cheese sandwich for our vegetarian customers if they want one.”

Sounds delicious!

Meanwhile, the federal food police will soon be bribing your local school:

A Federal Effort to Push Junk Food Out of Schools
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will begin a drive this week to expel Pepsi, French fries and Snickers bars from the nation’s schools in hopes of reducing the number of children who get fat during their school years.

In legislation, soon to be introduced, candy and sugary beverages would be banned and many schools would be required to offer more nutritious fare.

It appears to me that these folks do not even know what the word nutritious means. The most nutritious foods are also the most fattening foods.

But Denise Snow, the school cafeteria manager, said that children can be taught to eat better. “When we went to whole-wheat pizza, the kids fussed for a while and we lost some of them,” Ms. Snow said. “But now they don’t say a thing, and pretty much everyone is back to eating them.”

I would like to see the scientific evidence that eating whole wheat pizza instead of regular pizza has ever made anyone healthier. I think that Ms. Snow is annoying the kids for nothing.

Haiti tries to starve the men

AP reports:

Aid groups offer special shelters for women and provide women-only food distribution points to deter men from bullying them. But challenges are rife more than three weeks after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake killed an estimated 200,000 people and left as many as 3 million in need of food, shelter and medicine.

Women who lined up for food before dawn Saturday said they were attacked by knife-wielding men who stole their coupons.

No, they are not deterring the men. By depriving the men of food, they encouraging this so-called bullying.

"We've targeted the women because we think it's the best way to get to families," said Jacques Montouroy, a Catholic Relief Services worker helping out Saturday. "In other distributions when we've opened it up to men, we found that only half of the men would do what they were supposed to with the food."

Huhh? What are the men supposed to be doing with the food? Is the food getting eaten or not?

"It's discrimination!" said Thomas Louis, 40. "We've all lost mothers, sisters, wives. Without women we can't get coupons. They're treating men like we are animals."

No, animals get fed. The men are treated worse.

This is all unnecessary, as I've noted below. It appears that the relief efforts are more interested in maintaining their crazy rationing schemes than to actually prevent starvation.

Watching White House BMI

Michele Obama is giving advice on getting fat:

The first lady made the issue of healthy eating personal last week at an event in Alexandria, Va., where she kicked off a campaign addressing the issue of childhood obesity. ...

Obama said the doctor suggested she first look at her daughters' body mass index (BMI). The minor changes she subsequently made in their daily habits, Obama said, made all the difference.

Some charge that Obama's comments may be perceived as a focus on weight and dieting, which sends the wrong message to the public. The first lady should be discussing behavioral change, not weight loss, said Laura Collins Lyster-Mensh, an eating disorder activist and executive director of Families Empowered and Supporting Treatment of Disorder (F.E.A.S.T.).

"We've confused health and weight in a way that's very confusing for children and very confusing for parents," Lyster-Mensh said. "When we speak publicly about putting our children on a diet, we start to get into weight stigma and confusing the message to families."

The focus on obesity, Lyster-Mensh said, turns this into an issue of appearances, which does not bode well for children, especially girls.

"There is simply no reason to be pushing children into weight reduction diets and that's the message parents out there get," Lyster-Mensh said. "Dieting is a gateway drug to eating disorders for those with a biological predisposition to eating disorders."

Michelle Obama's Comments Stir Debate

President Obama is also guilty of talking about his daughters' weight. In an interview with Parents magazine in November 2008, the president said, "A couple of years ago -- you'd never know it by looking at her now -- Malia was getting a little chubby."

I am not sure what is more ridiculous here. The First Lady has to ask a physician to measure BMI in order to determine whether her daughter is fat? The President is not allowed to say that his kid is getting chubby? And an "eating disorder activist" says that telling a fat kid to lose weight is confusing?

BMI is useless on kids. Kids get fat because of irresponsible parents who listen to stupid eating disorder activists.

Leftists like Apple iphones

California leftist love the Toyota Prius:

A Toyota representative said 22 percent of all U.S. Prius sales in 2009 were in California, slightly down from 25 percent in 2008.

Presumably they like to make a statement about saving the Earth. Or maybe they just like to drive solo in the carpool lane, as California used to give special carpool privilege stickers to Prius owners.

There are less obvious
political divisions in cell phone users:

A statewide survey of 600 likely voters ...

* One in 7 voters (16 percent) owns an iPhone, and by a wide margin (57 percent to 31 percent), they favor Jerry Brown, the unannounced Democratic front-runner, over Republican Meg Whitman in the race for governor.

* One in 5 voters (21 percent) owns a BlackBerry or other smartphone, and they prefer Whitman for governor (47 percent to 38 percent over Brown). BlackBerry owners skew significantly more Republican (40 percent to 25 percent) than iPhone users (53 percent Democratic). Surrendering to AT&T's dodgy 3G network apparently is a reliable predictor that voters lean to the left — possibly while trying to get better reception.

This makes sense to me. Leftists are happy to pay more taxes for govt-rationed health care, even if it limits their medical options. The super-rich leftist figure that they will always be able to buy what they want anyway. For example, rich Canadians get US health care:

ST. JOHN’S, Newfoundland — The premier of Canada’s east coast province is undergoing heart surgery in the United States ...

Williams, 60, is an independently wealthy former lawyer and businessman who donates his premier’s salary to charity.

With a Blackberry, you can choose your service carrier, your phone, and your apps to run on the phone. It is not artificially crippled like the Apple iphone. Right wingers want to freedom to do what they want, and leftists will pay to have their options limited.

Trend towards round number pricing

A new book, Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It), claims to explain why stores and restaurants use prices like $9.95. It tricks you into thinking that you are getting a better deal.

It seems likely that he is correct, but there are currently several big food advertising campaigns with round number pricing. Pizza Hut is selling pizza for $10, Subway is selling foot-long sandwiches for $5, Burger King is selling cheeseburgers for $1, and Boston Market is pushing sides for $1. No 99 cents. These campaigns seem to be extremely successful.

College is for girls

In case anyone still thinks that girls have more limited educational opportunities, they have taken over the colleges:

At age 22, ... 12.8% of women had earned a bachelor's degree, compared with 6.9% of men.

Feminists have moved on to complaining about the orgasm gap:

Women are shattering political glass ceilings, surpassing men in the workforce, and even winning Indy-car races. But there’s one area where the gender gap has proved particularly stubborn.

“The orgasm gap is an inequity that’s as serious as the pay gap, and it’s producing a rampant culture of sexual asymmetry,” says Paula England, a professor of sociology at Stanford University.

I don't think that this is a joke.

Update: The NY Times reports on the college boy shortage:

Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine’s Day, ...

Even worse, “Girls feel pressured to do more than they’re comfortable with, to lock it down,” Ms. Lynch said.

As for a man’s cheating, “that’s a thing that girls let slide, because you have to,” said Emily Kennard, a junior at North Carolina. “If you don’t let it slide, you don’t have a boyfriend.”

Faculty members and administrators are well aware of the situation.

Cell phone laws failed

The NY Times reports:

Laws banning cellphone use while driving apparently haven’t reduced crashes, according to a study released on Friday that compared the number of total crashes before the ban with the number after. The study found virtually no difference in the numbers, a finding that had the researchers scratching their heads.

I am not surprised. There was never any good data supporting these laws. The laws seem to be driven more by politics than by safety concerns.

Food for women only

AP reports:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Relief workers began handing out women-only food coupons, launching a new phase ...

In other developments:

• Ten Americans were detained by Haitian police on Saturday as they tried to bus 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic, allegedly without proper documents. The Baptist church members from Idaho called it a "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission" to save abandoned children in the disaster zone.

Only women get food? Haiti wants the church members to be criminally prosecuted in the USA. There are some very strange priorities in Haiti.

This is Pres. Obama's Katrina. It would be more efficient to airdrop the food, as has been done in the past.

False Rape Claim Over Bad Sex

From a police report yesterday:

Two Tennessee women who accused a man of rape have admitted to cops that they had consensually agreed to sex with him in exchange for a pack of cigarettes. One woman told investigators that the duo filed a phony police report because they "didn't enjoy the sex," according to cops. Jessica Kathleen Alexander, 18, and Tammy Nicole Ortega, 29, were arrested today for filing a false police report. ... Police have not identified the accused man, who still could be charged with solicitation in connection with the sex-for-cigarettes arrangement.

The report has pictures. My guess is that they will still charge the man, if they can trick him into admitting the bad sex.

Confusing zero with infinity

You would not think that anyone would confuse zero with infinity, but people do all the time. For example, an astronomer writes:

If there is a finite probability of something happening (ie. a planet forming around a star, or a galaxy forming), then in an infinite universe there will be an infinite number of that thing.

In this sentence, the word "finite" has to be read as "non-zero" to make any sense. Finite means not infinite. He is confusing zero with infinite.

Likewise, the term "finite chance" is always misused. The terms "slim chance" and "fat chance" are also confusing. You would think that these terms would be opposites.

The Simpsons porn lands man on sex offender list

Australia news:

An Ipswich man has only narrowly avoided jail for downloading graphic cartoon porn images featuring child characters from The Simpsons and The Powerpuff Girls television shows.

The 28-year-old former security guard was handed a 12-month suspended prison sentence and is now a registered sex offender after pleading guilty in Ipswich District Court to having the bizarre images on his computer.

Police went to Kurt James Milner’s Leichhardt home on January 24, 2008 after receiving an anonymous tip-off about the disturbing material.

Officers took his home computer, which would no longer turn on, but a year later police forensic experts recovered 64 images of cartoon child exploitation material in the machine’s recycle bin.

This is crazy. First, these were not pictures. No child was exploited. They were just humorous cartoons.

Second, the cops spent a year searching his home computer based on an anonymous tip? Do you really want a society where people are jailed for home viewing of cartoons based on anonymous tips?

Another crippled Apple product

In case you have been sucked in by Apple hype Apple Ipad was announced today. It costs about $800, plus $30 per month, depending on options.

It is crippled as usual. It has no keyboard, no memory slot, no telephone, no removable battery, very limited battery life, no camera, no GPS, and no multi-tasking. There is no ability to run any apps, except those that have been approved by Apple. Web pages that use Flash, Java, ActiveX, or Silverlight will not work.

It is the modern equivalent of a dumb terminal. I think that this product will be a dud. Serious computer users will have no interest in it.

A lot of people think that Apple can do no wrong, after its success with the Apple ipod. But that product only became successful when Apple persuaded the big music labels to put their music exclusively on the Apple itunes store, with digital rights management to prevent you from listening to the music on other devices. But now there are much better music players, and you can buy unencumbered music from Amazon and other places.

Update: Also, it won't work on the T-Mobile wireless network, and it has no USB port. I do not expect to buy any computer without a USB port for the foreseeable future.

Women hate DNA tests

From an advice column today:

Dear Annie: ... However, I am not entirely certain that my second daughter is my biological child. Around the time she was conceived, my wife had an affair with my brother-in-law. ... Is there any way I could secretly obtain a DNA specimen from her to do a test? ...

Dear Tennessee: ... The only valid reason for doing a DNA test is to provide your daughter with an accurate medical history, but if you don't plan to inform her, this doesn't apply.

Yes, the columnists are women. No amount of feminist propaganda will change the basic fact that a man will want to know if his daughter is really his daughter, and the daughter will want to know whether her father is really her father.

Feminists have long said that men have no valid reason to have any say about a woman getting an abortion. Now these columnists say a man has no valid reason to find out who inseminated his wife. This attitude will soon force all men to get DNA tests on every child.

The Trauma Myth

The NY Times reports:

For a graduate research project at Harvard in the mid-1990s, the psychologist Susan A. Clancy arranged to interview adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, expecting to confirm the conventional wisdom that the more traumatic the abuse had been, the more troubled an adult the child had become.

Dr. Clancy figured she knew what she would find: “Everything I knew dictated that the abuse should be a horrible experience, that the child should be traumatized at the time it was happening — overwhelmed with fear, shock, horror.”

But many carefully documented interviews revealed nothing of the sort. Commonly, the abuse had been confusing for the child but not traumatic in the usual sense of the word. ...

First, her data flew in the face of several decades of politically correct trauma theory, feminist theory and sexual politics.

Second, Dr. Clancy found that the world had little appetite for scientific subtlety ...

I guess that means that it is difficult to get scientific data on this subject. People will spread false myths, and the scientists will not have the guts to correct them. I think that there are a bunch of areas where science has been corrupted by political correctness.

Girls may learn math anxiety from female teachers

AP reports:

Little girls may learn to fear math from the women who are their earliest teachers.

Despite gains in recent years, women still trail men in some areas of math achievement, and the question of why has provoked controversy. Now, a study of first- and second-graders suggests what may be part of the answer: Female elementary school teachers who are concerned about their own math skills could be passing that along to the little girls they teach.

Young students tend to model themselves after adults of the same sex, and having a female teacher who is anxious about math may reinforce the stereotype that boys are better at math than girls, explained Sian L. Beilock, an associate professor in psychology at the University of Chicago.

Makes sense to me. My local elementary school only hires female teachers, and only the sort who hate math.

Russian ice dance offensive to aborigines

Yahoo sports reports:

Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, the favorites for ice-dancing gold in Vancouver, wowed the crowds with their routine at the European Championships. They sit in the lead after their original dance, a tribute to Australian Aborigines.

Except, Aboriginal leaders don't see it as a tribute. They don't really see how it has anything to do with their culture at all.

Ice dancing doesn't have anything to do with anybody's culture. It doesn't have much to do with sport either, as the votes from the judges is always extremely close to what has been decided as the pre-competition favorites. The competitors are not even allowed to do dance moves that are difficult. But their costume looks great!

NY man accused of beheading

AP reports:

The founder of an Islam-oriented television station who is accused of beheading his wife was abused by her for years, according to his lawyer, who said Friday he will pursue a defense combining that justification as well as psychiatric claims.

Defense attorneys' claims that Muzzammil Hassan was victimized by his wife drew a blunt response from District Attorney Frank Sedita after a hearing Friday.

"He chopped her head off," Sedita said. "He chopped her head off. That's all I have to say about Mr. Hassan's apparent defense that he was a battered spouse."

Chopping her head off would be enough evidence for me, but maybe not for a conviction. In California, we have a special law that allows a defense like this. In 2002, a woman who murdered her husband was released under the law.

I'm not sure who is worse, the feminists or the Mohammedans.

Schools stop teaching foreign languages

The NY Times reports:

Thousands of public schools stopped teaching foreign languages in the past decade, according to a government-financed survey — dismal news for a nation that needs more linguists to conduct its global business and diplomacy.

Dismal? This is great news. The USA has too many people speaking foreign languages already. We just don't need very many diplomats. Most diplomacy is in English anyway.

But another contrary trend has educators and policymakers abuzz: a rush by schools in all parts of America to offer instruction in Chinese.

Chinese? That is really a step backwards. Phonetic languages were invented about 5000 years ago, but it is just now getting to China. The Chinese language does not even computerize very well.

Story claims wives make more money

AP reports:

Report: More men get economic boost from marriage

NEW YORK — Historically, marriage was the surest route to financial security for women. Nowadays, it's men who are increasingly getting the biggest economic boost from tying the knot, according to a new analysis of census data.

The changes, summarized in a Pew Research Center report being released today, reflect the proliferation of working wives over the past 40 years — a period in which American women outpaced men in both education and earnings growth. A larger share of today's men, compared with their 1970 counterparts, are married to women whose education and income exceed their own, and a larger share of women are married to men with less education and income.

After you thru all that, it says that only 22% of wives out-earn their husbands. Some of that could be from husbands who are temporarily out of work, and may not reflect income at the time of marriage.

Update: A reader has another criticism below of the study. The NY Times article on the study included this:

Kristen W. Springer, a sociologist at Rutgers, has found that among men in their 50s, having a wife who earns more money is associated with poorer health. Among the highest earning couples in her study, a husband who earns less than his wife is 60 percent less likely to be in good health compared with men who earn more than their wives.

By phrasing it this way, the article makes it sound like the wife's high salary is causing bad health to the husband. But the wife's salary probably has nothing to do with it. People in poor health earn less money, for obvious reasons. So the healthy men in their 50s make more money than the unhealthy men in their 50s, and are therefore more likely to earn more than their wives.

Mom defends soldier accused of having child porn

Chicago news:

An Illinois National Guard soldier in Afghanistan has been charged by the U.S. Army with possessing child pornography over pictures of a young relative his mother says she sent him.

Terri Miller of Galesburg says she sent her son, Specialist Billy Miller, pictures of the little girl to help him get over his homesickness.

The pictures show the child in a swimsuit playing a wading pool and sitting on a truck.

Wow. Do not send pictures to a soldier. It is way too dangerous.

New spanking research

The NY Daily News reports:

Spanking makes kids perform better in school, helps them become more successful: study

A study, which found that young children whose parents spank them perform better at school later on, isn’t winning high marks with child development experts.

Po Bronson writes in Newsweek:

For decades, research on spanking was challenged by the lack of a control group to compare against - almost all kids (90+%) had been spanked at least once, at some time in their early lives. New research shows that now up to 25% of kids are never spanked, so it's a fair question: How are they turning out? Are they turning out better? Surprisingly, they're not.

In NurtureShock, we described some extensive cross-ethnic and international research on spanking by Drs. Jennifer Lansford and Ken Dodge.
Advertisement

Their data suggested that if a culture views spanking as the normal consequence for bad behavior, kids aren’t damaged by its occasional use.

To explain this shocker, the scholars suggested that in cultures or communities where spanking is common, parents are less agitated when administering spankings. Spanking almost never -- when combined with losing your temper -- can be worse than spanking frequently.

This is not the last word on the subject. I am sure that people will disagree for decades to come. But don't believe anyone who tells you that science has proved spanking to be ineffective or harmful. Spanking is just as good as the other methods in the studies, and maybe better.

Crazy people need certificates to spend money

From another trial day:

SAN FRANCISCO — With the historic trial of a challenge to California's gay marriage ban nearing the end of its first week, two more experts testified Thursday on the negative fallout of denying same-sex couples the right to wed.

The experts cited the mental health toll on gays and lesbians across the state, and they said the ban costs a local government such as San Francisco's millions of dollars a year. ...

Thursday, Ilan Meyer, a Columbia University professor, testified on his research into the mental health damage caused to gays and lesbians by discrimination and the denial of marriage rights. ...

Edmund Egan, the city and county of San Francisco's chief economist, testified it costs the local government's coffers as much as $35 million a year in lost revenue from weddings, hotels and related expenses by denying same-sex couples the right to marry in the city.

I think that Olson and Boies are trying to sabotage the case. These are really bad arguments. If these are really valid arguments that the law is unconstitutional, then I would think that the cell phone driving law and a lot of other laws would also be unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, DC is not allowed to vote:

Thirty-one states have held referendums on whether or not to ban gay marriage, but a Washington, D.C., judge ruled Thursday that such a vote would violate the District’s Human Rights Act.

I just want my rights

I thought that the California same-sex trial was going to present evidence that sexual preference was immutable, but the first day gave us this:

Kristin Perry and Sandra Stier will put their love life on trial today when they take the stand in a federal courtroom in San Francisco. ...

Stier, 47, is a tech-support manager for Alameda County, and the two are raising four boys, ages 15 to 21. Two of the boys are from Perry's previous relationship with a woman and two are from Stier's previous relationship with a man.

So apparently she can have a sexual relationship with a man. It appears that this case is more about cutting fathers off from their sons. She wants same-sex marriage so that it will be respectable for women to ditch their husbands, take the kids, live with another woman, and force the kids to grow up without a father.

They live in Berkeley. I thought lesbianism was already respectable in Berkeley!

It appears that this couple never really wanted to get married. They had a chance to in 2008, but they became domestic partners instead.

The lesbian plaintiff gave this explanation:

"I feel like a tiny person in this huge country, and I just want my rights," testified Sandy Stier, a Berkeley woman and one of the gay plaintiffs seeking the right to marry. "I'm just trying to get the rights the Constitution says I have."

If that is all she wants, then she should read what the Constitution says about lesbianism. The case should be dismissed, unless she can prove that she has been damaged somehow.

German trials may be in English

German news:

Courts in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia have offered to handle business cases in English for a pilot project under keen observation by other courts, which could soon follow their example.

The initiative was launched after it was noted that the most lucrative cases – for both state coffers and lawyers – were being conducted outside of Germany because international businesses did not want to handle legal matters in German.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung paper reported at the weekend that justice ministers of North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg, Roswitha Müller-Piepenkötter and Till Steffen respectively, aimed to change the law governing the German courts so that cases could be conducted in English.

This makes sense to me. Hardly anyone speaks German, except for Germans.

Appalled by food

Today's advice column:

DEAR ABBY: Many people in the world appear indifferent to human suffering and the serious problems our planet is facing.

I am appalled when I see TV shows about food contests in which mounds of food are piled in front of each contender, who then wolfs down enough to feed five or six people.

Evidently the audience enjoys the spectacle. They cheer and applaud the winner as if he was a hero. Do they never think about the millions of people who are starving? I would appreciate your comments. -- PRAGMATIST IN N.Y.

DEAR PRAGMATIST: No, I doubt they consider that while they are stuffing themselves, others are literally starving, nor have I heard that the sponsors have donated a portion of the proceeds to feed the hungry.

She seems to have a conceptual misunderstanding about food. Eating more slowly will not solve the planet's problems. Obesity is a bigger problem than starvation.

The fat people are the ones who eat excessive amounts of food, not the competitive eaters. Gurgitators do not necessarily eat more than anyone else. They just eat more quickly.

Trial may make science argument

Ted Olson is suing for same-sex marriage in California, and wrote a Newsweek article on The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage. I did not see any conservative arguments in the article, but he does claim to make a scientific argument:

My answer to this seeming conundrum rests on a lifetime of exposure to persons of different backgrounds, histories, viewpoints, and intrinsic characteristics, ...

Science has taught us, even if history has not, that gays and lesbians do not choose to be homosexual any more than the rest of us choose to be heterosexual. To a very large extent, these characteristics are immutable, like being left-handed.

No, there is no gay gene or any such scientific proof.

His same-sex marriage trial will soon be broadcast on YouTube. Perhaps he will present the scientific evidence and explain its legal significance.

If there really is scientific evidence, then it should tell us what age sexual orientation is determined. It would not say "to a large extent", but give us numbers. And we have all sort of other laws and policies that favor some people based on characteristics that may be largely immutable, so I don't see why that would be unconstitutional.

So there are now three classes of Californians: heterosexual couples who can get married, divorced, and remarried, if they wish; same-sex couples who cannot get married but can live together in domestic partnerships; and same-sex couples who are now married but who, if they divorce, cannot remarry. This is an irrational system, it is discriminatory, and it cannot stand.

It was the Calif. supreme court that created that third category. Maybe Olson should have tried to get the US supreme court to overturn that, if he feels so strongly about it.

However bad that decision may have been, how are Olson's clients harmed by it? He does not explain in his article.

Daughter is embarrassed

From today's advice column:

DEAR ABBY: I'm a 15-year-old girl whose parents treat me like an 8-year-old. They not only refuse to let me see any movie that isn't G-rated, but they still cut my meat for me! Once a week we go to the park, and they still push me on the swings.

I don't want to tell them it's embarrassing because I'm afraid I'll hurt their feelings. Please tell me how to convey to my parents that I'm not a child anymore. -- OLD ENOUGH IN VIRGINIA

She is 15 and she is not yet able to express embarrassment to her parents? No wonder they treat her like an 8-year-old.

Search censorship

PZ Myers reports that Google censors certain searches involving Islam and Mohammedans. Yahoo search does not have this problem.

Update: This story has been picked up by Fox News:

A Google spokesman explained that the weird absence of results is just a software problem: "This is in fact a bug and we're working to fix it as quickly as we can." But the company would not respond to requests for clarification.

An intriguing corollary: Google offers search suggestions for future tense queries as well. Ask "Christianity will" and Google suggests "Christianity will end, it will disappear," and "Christianity will end." Ask the same about Islam and Google notes that "Islam will dominate the world" and "Islam will destroy Europe."

Google likes to trick people into thinking that these things are unforeseeable algorithm quirks. Don't believe it. Results like this are caused by human hand-tuning. Google employs 1000s of engineers to hand-tune searches.

Study on math gender gap

A SciAm podcast says:

Else-Quest notes that there is some association between the status of women in each country and their ability to do mathematics.

“The percentage of women in parliament was moderately associated with the size of the gender gap in math such that in countries where there were fewer women in parliament males tended to do better in math than girls by a larger extent than in countries in which there was better representation by women in parliament.”

That connection would seem to imply that achievement levels are not innate and fixed.

I don't know anything about this research, and it is not online, but the conclusion does not follow. This supposed correlation has nothing to do with whether achievement is innate.

Maybe the girls are innately smarter in some countries, and as a result they do better on tests and get elected to political office more.

Counseling undermines marriage

Today's Dear Abby says:

DEAR ABBY: I just started counseling for postpartum depression. My husband keeps asking me what we talked about. During the counseling sessions I discuss all aspects of my life -- including my husband. How can I let him know that what I discuss with my therapist is none of his business? -- NEW MAMA IN ARIZONA

DEAR NEW MAMA: Your husband's curiosity is natural, particularly if he has never had any counseling.

What does that mean? Do counselor explain, on the first day of counseling, to keep secrets from your spouse? There is something sick about a counselor who tries to convince a wife that she has greater loyalties to the counselor than to her husband.

Why is this woman even writing to Dear Abby if she already has a counselor?

I think that this couple is headed for divorce. If the wife has problems bad enough to need counseling, then she should be willing to tell her husband. The counselor is actively working to undermine the marriage. Yes, the husband has good reason to try to terminate the counseling.

Married women get fatter

The NY Times reports:

It is widely known that women tend to gain weight after giving birth, but now a large study has found evidence that even among childless women, those who live with a mate put on more pounds than those who live without one.

The differences, the scientists found, were stark. ...

“It’s interesting and brings out some important points,” said Maureen A. Murtaugh, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Utah who has published widely on weight gain in women. Perhaps, she suggested, a more active social life may help explain why women with partners gain more weight.

“Think of going to a restaurant,” Dr. Murtaugh said. “They serve a 6-foot man the same amount as they serve me, even though I’m 5 feet 5 inches and 60 pounds lighter.”

She is published widely on the subject, and that is the best theory that she can come up with? Come on, that is ridiculous.

I have a simpler theory. All women get fat unless they are trying to attract a man. A married woman can usually get fat and keep her husband, as long as she cooks his favorite food and gets him fat also. If she manages to stay thin, then she can usually divorce her husband and have that more active social life.

The lost genius tribe

Did you know that there was once a race of humans in Africa, called the Boskops, with an average IQ of 150? The current Discover magazine says so. If you read the online article, you'll find a helpful link to a real anthropologist debunks the whole article.

Are people born criminals?

Today's Si Valley paper reports:

Research: Criminal behavior may be hard-wired

Increasing evidence from neuroscience suggests that many aspects of antisocial behavior can be traced to dysfunctional brains. For instance, brain scans of prisoners suggest the circuitry involved in fear conditioning has gone awry in criminal minds. Deformities of certain parts of the brain that may contribute to antisocial and psychopathic behavior have also been linked to a greater risk of arrests and convictions. ...

In the early 1970s, they traveled to the island nation of Mauritius, off the eastern coast of Africa. ...

The test involved a series of 12 tones. Some of them were pleasant. Others were higher-pitched and were followed by a jarring sound produced by "jangling metal objects," according to a report in The American Journal of Psychiatry.

The children were hooked up to a polygraph to measure their reactions to the noises. The high-pitched tones were supposed to make them sweat in anticipation of the unpleasant sound, while the pleasant tones weren't supposed to elicit much response.

Twenty years later, the researchers scoured court records to see whether any of their subjects had committed crimes involving violence, drugs, property or serious driving offenses. ...

The results suggest that criminal behavior may be hard-wired — to some degree — in children as young as 3 and could be the result of a malfunctioning amygdala, the researchers wrote. If they're not afraid that their criminal behavior will land them in jail, what else will deter them? The result, they wrote, is "a lack of conscience."

The web site dates this story Jan. 1, but also has the same story dated 11/25/2009. The source is a November 17, 2009 LA Times story.

It's okay, I missed this story the first couple of times. I missed it in the 1970s also. The story is a little fishy, tho. Why did they have to goto Mauritius? If this was such great 1970s research, has it been replicated? I don't know anything about Mauritius. Are babies baptized there? Are they taught right from wrong?

The decline of the American novel

NYU prof Katie Roiphe reviews sex scenes in recent novels, and writes:

But our new batch of young or youngish male novelists are not dreaming up Portnoys or Rabbits. The current sexual style is more childlike; innocence is more fashionable than virility, the cuddle preferable to sex. Prototypical is a scene in Dave Eggers’s road trip novel, “You Shall Know Our Velocity,” where the hero leaves a disco with a woman and she undresses and climbs on top of him, and they just lie there: “Her weight was the ideal weight and I was warm and wanted her to be warm”; or the relationship in Benjamin Kunkel’s “Indecision”: “We were sleeping together brother-sister style and mostly refraining from outright sex.” ...

Rather than an interest in conquest or consummation, there is an obsessive fascination with trepidation, and with a convoluted, postfeminist second-guessing. ...

The younger writers are so self-­conscious, so steeped in a certain kind of liberal education, that their characters can’t condone even their own sexual impulses; they are, in short, too cool for sex. Even the mildest display of male aggression is a sign of being overly hopeful, overly earnest or politically un­toward.

I did not know that the men in modern novels had gotten so wimpy. My guess is that real men don't read these books anyway. They are consumed by postfeminists who require their porn to match their politics.

Officer fired for joining the KKK

AP reports from Florida:

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – An Alachua County Sheriff's Office corrections officer who acknowledged being a member of the Ku Klux Klan has been fired for belonging to a subversive or terrorist organization, a violation of the agency's code of ethics.

Wayne Kerschner was fired Tuesday following a 10-month internal investigation.

Is this particular KKK organization subversive or terrorist? I am guessing that they are not terrorists, because the article says that they do criminal background checks on all members. The organization mainly operates a web site and has some secret handshakes.

I am just wondering if they also fire officers who belong to Communist or Mohammedan jihadist organizations.

And if it took 10 months for the investigators to figure out that this was a subversive organization, then how was this officer supposed to know?

In the 1950s, many prominent American leftists argued that they had a free speech right to join Communist and other subversive organizations. Where are they now?

Here are more goofy Florida stories.

Here is another racially inflammatory free speech story:

Letter may be hate crime

If caught, the poster of an anonymous, racist letter on the Mid-Atlantic Christian University campus could be charged with a hate crime.

District Attorney Frank Parrish said this week if the author or authors of the letter violated the state’s ethnic intimidation statute, they’ll face Class 1 misdemeanors.

“If the evidence of the crime is there, and the alleged offenders are there, we will prosecute them,” Parrish said Wednesday.

Although Parrish hadn’t read the letter, he said its contents led him to believe it was written with the intent to intimidate persons on the basis of their race.

“It sounds to me in a general way like threatening language,” Parrish said.

So the DA has not even read the letter, and yet he wants to prosecute someone for some publicly posted opinions.

Misuse of donated money

The NY Times ethicist fields this question:

I am an avid public-radio listener and donate regularly to my local station. It recently became known that its chief executive is the highest-paid in public broadcasting, earning nearly $500,000 a year. Many of my friends see this as a misuse of donated money and now refuse to support the station. I feel that if you listen, you must pay your share. Who’s right?

Huhh? Your tax money already supports public radio. So do commercials, even tho they broadcast on non-commercial frequencies. Their news stories are filled with leftist propaganda. And yet somehow liberal guilt gets people to donate money to support outrageous salaries. Go figure.

TSA harasses bloggers

I am puzzled by this story. The NY Times reports:

Agency Drops Bloggers’ Subpoenas

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Transportation Security Administration on Thursday dropped the subpoenas it had issued to two Internet writers in its effort to learn who leaked an airline security directive.

The agency said the investigation was “nearing a successful conclusion, and the subpoenas are no longer in effect.” ...

One subpoena went to an Internet travel writer, Chris Elliott of Winter Springs, Fla., who did not immediately comply. ...

The other blogger, Steven Frischling of Connecticut, said he had been forced to hand over his computer to agents.

It appears that the TSA got what it wanted. The story says the agency "dropped the subpoenas", as if it backed down in the face of Free Speech challenges. But the rest of the story says the opposite, and suggests that the bloggers were forced to give up the info.