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.