Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 01/15/2012

Aesthetics

• Photography in the style of ancient Chinese art.
• A guide on buying a camera.

Books

• An interactive account of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Culture

• Humans in big gatherings

Economics

• Facts about Gold.
• A visualization of the economic inequality in America.

Epistemology

• I haven’t heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect until just recently, but it seems like something I would teach my class.

Ethics

• A Darwinian approach to moral philosophy.
• Simple advice for living a good life.

Politics

• Ron Paul is for States Rights, not libertarianism.
• Check out which countries has freedom of the press.
• Which GOP candidate would cut taxes?  Clue: Romney is basically Obama.
• A libertarian defense of licensing parents. 

Religion

Is religion ridiculous?  Most atheists think so but Alain de Botton, who is an atheist, says that many atheists can still learn from religions.

Science

• Decoding and reconstructing people’s visual experiences: 
• The international standard of the kilogram needs to be updated.  Why?  The universe is gaining mass.  The kilogram is still the only measurement that is artificial, and there’s talk about making it into a fundamental constant.

Sexuality

• Record or see when someone made love.
• Oh the dynamics of modern dating.
• Will the future of sexual orientation get us beyond gay or straight?
• Evidence suggesting humans were polygynous during our evolution.  What stopped it?  Agriculture.
• Should prison inmates have the right to masturbate?  The thesis is that without any sexual release, the inmates become more violent in prison and it just exacerbates the problem.

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 12/23/2011

Wow!  With the semester over, I’m finally caught up with the news.  Once the semester starts again, I’ll probably have a harder time blogging frequently, but we shall see how the next semester is treating me.  Till then, here’s some news that I found interesting:

Abortion

• A study showing there is no correlation between a woman getting an abortion and mental illness.

Children

• Suppose you don’t plan on having any kids.  Someone approaches you and says, “but who’s going to take care of you when you’re old?”  Here are some great replies.  Shortcut: planning to have your kids to take care of you when you’re old is (a) a horrible retirement plan, (b) superfluous, or (c) a non-creative effort on planning out your old age.  The comments contribute a lot as well.

Culture

• US road casualties.
• The science of waiting in line.
• Polemicist, atheist, essayist: dead at 62.  Yet, he probably wasn’t a great guy in the end.
• Hitchling: (noun) a child void of religious indoctrination who is encouraged to read broadly and to seek the truth unapologetically
• Tyrant of North Korea dead.
• Conformity is not living the excellent life:   and also from Carlin: 
• How to dress like a nerd for boys and girls.
• Which country is the most giving at Christmas time?  It’s not the USA.  From the Economist: 
• Vocal Fry, once considered a disorder, is now becoming a fad for young college women.  What is vocal fry?  Check this out, then check this to see it being applied (about one minute into it).  Why do they do it?  It’s to broadcast themselves as part of a social group.

Economics

• Interest Rates in the long-term.  Taken from this site: 

Education

• Need to gain more knowledge?  Need to find more innovative ways to teach a class room?  Go here, here, and here.
• A panoramic virtual tour of the Smithsonian.

Health

• How to prevent cancer.  Pretty complex but still cool.
• The Philosophy of Food Project.
• An interesting article about insomnia drugs waking people up from comas.

Humor

• One women records her husband sleeping.  Apparently, he says some of the funniest things while he’s sleeping.
• Wow!  See some texts from a 17-year old who thinks he’s all that.  Hilarity ensues!  Is it fake?  Who cares?  It’s still funny!

Logic

• The concept of infinity is a complex issue.  The BBC is tackling it: 

Marriage

• There’s big news that marriage is on the decline (to about 51% are married).  Now there’s a graph that you can see how that pertains to the whole nation.

Middle East

• Really?  Saudi officials say that if women are aloud to drive, it would be the “end of virginity”.
• With the end of the Iraq War, here’s an extensive chart on the casualties.

Movies

• The dark side of female sexuality in films.
• The next Pixar film is going to take us inside the brain.

Music

• Listen to all of the Beatles songs all at once.  They are played together, sequenced in order of lengths, with the longest starting first and all 226 tunes ending together.

Philosophy

• Was Socrates the gadfly because he had epilepsy?  [H/T Manuela Gomez]
• Could David Hume known about Buddhism?  Alison Gopnik suggests that Hume talked to a Jesuit who was an expert at Tibetan Buddhism.
• This is probably why public debates have been getting less and less authoritative.

Politics

• For those of you in Utah, Rocky Anderson is thinking of running for President.  [H/T Aubrey Spivey]
• Ron Paul was asked what every America should read.  Paul’s answer was The Law, by Frédéric Bastiat.  Never heard of it, but luckily, there’s a website for his work.
• Your government: bought and paid for.  [H/T Nathan Blackerby]

Polyamory

• Don’t like divorce?  Try polyamory.
• Journal article suggesting that triparenting is better than the traditional two parent model.  Her argument: one parent is ok, two parents are better, three parents are better than the two parent arrangement.

Relationships

• What to get your wife; what to get your mistress.  Wow!  Taken from here: 
• Barely half of Americans are married.  That’s a record low.

Religion

• A three-hour BBC documentary about the Story of God.  Basically, it covers the three Abrahamic religions: 
• Interview with philosopher Peter Boghossain, who argues that philosophy professors should challenge students’ groundless (usually faith-based) beliefs with facts.

Science

• Well, there’s ask a philosopher, ask a physicist, now there’s simply ask a scientist.  However, it seems geared to biology and evolution.
• Rats show empathy.
• Biostatistics Ryan Gosling.
• These type of cartoons would’ve been really helpful during my times studying physics: 
• Stephen Colbert (not the character, but the real person) interviews Neil deGrasse Tyson:
• Speaking of which, Tyson offered eight books that everyone should read.  Luckily, you can get them all for free.  In order:
1. The Bible (eBook) - “to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.”
2. The System of the World by Isaac Newton (eBook) – “to learn that the universe is a knowable place.”
3. On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth.”
4. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos.”
5. The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world.”
6. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”
7. The Art of War by Sun Tsu (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art.”
8. The Prince by Machiavelli (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it.”
• A new blog about facing the singularity.
• A proposed machine that would predict the future.   Looks like Bostrum’s simulation argument is getting more and more plausible.
• Comparison of Artificial Brain projects.
• Ten things everyone should know about time.
• Skeptical about Climate Change?  This site is skeptical of your skepticism of climate change.
• Wow!  Someone did a dissertation on Robot Ethics.  It’s got pictures too.
• Speaking of which, it looks like it’s seriously being considered.

Sexuality

• Neil Sinhababu gives an interesting argument on why the argument against same-sex marriage is wrong.
• Steven Landsburgh may be right: More Sex is Safe Sex.  Here is part II.
• Proponents of Prop. 8 in California may not have a strong standing.
• Students from Fordam University–a Catholic University–cannot get adequate birth control.  Thus, some students have hosted on off-campus clinic as an alternative.
• University of Georgia made an unsurprising conclusion: Abstinence-only programs don’t lead to abstinent behavior.
• Women share “first kiss” at Navy homecoming.
• A book that I can get on board with.  This book is about “how young women in our culture are denied the opportunity to develop a sexual identity on their own terms. Instead girls (and many women) see their identities as tied up with how boys (/men) view them, never quite measuring up. Above all, it shows how girls, taught not to be sexual, often have sex not for the sake of their own sexual pleasure, but to be accepted, seen , and, ironically, rescued from their belief that they are not good enough as they are.”
• A chart of birth control methods.
• When it come to evolution, the size of the penis doesn’t matter–but shape does.
• The UN issues it’s first human rights report LGBT people.

Singledom

• I had no idea that Berkeley had a site for studying the dynamics of being single.

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 11/27/2011

This is a late post.  Usually I try to post something at least once a week, but school has been catching up to me and I’ve been busy.  We’ll see if the holidays and school will keep me busier.

Art

• Check out Picasso’s Guernica in 3D: 

Economics

• Very interesting table on money from ones to trillions.

Love

• This is your brain in love: 

Middle East

• Saudi Arabia is known for its harsh laws, but a new one is suggesting that if women have sexy eyes, she may be forced to cover them up.

Music

• Match your alcohol beverage with what music you’re listening to.  It’s called Drinkify.
• Moby has a website where movie makers can use his music for free as long as the movie is non-profit, independent, for student film makers.

Philosophy

• Whoa!  A philosopher at Baylor University has converted Spinoza’s Ethics into a logical dependency graph.  Very cool.  [H/T Daniel Vecchio]
• Herbert Spencer may not be a Social Darwinian, but maybe a bleeding heart libertarian.
• What are the chances that anyone exists?  The number is one out of 10^2,685,000.  Basically, it’s zero.

Politics

• Guide to American inequality.
• Who should be the next GOP candidate?  Anyone but Romney apparently.
• Biggest military spenders: 
• Republican clowns!
• Can there be common ground between libertarianism and the political left?  Fascinating talk: 

Religion

• Would the world be better off without religion?  52 percent of the panel was in favor of that motion.  You can listen to the full debate.

Science

• Take the science quiz to see your scientific IQ.  I got all 12 questions right.  Yay me.
• Got a minute?  Learn some physics.
• Mathematics in movies.

Sexuality

• An fMRI brain scan of a woman having an orgasm.  It’s pretty interesting through the regions of the brain and the different waves that goes through the brain.
• Medical schools seem to be neglecting gay and gender issues.
• This is a survey, not a study, but this shows that female gamers are more social and have more sex than their non-gamer counterparts.

Will

• A very interesting article about those who have strong or weak will power.  You’ve heard of physical fatigue and mental fatigue.  Those who have weak will power have decision fatigue.  The findings are that glucose helps replenish will power throughout the day.  This is generally why we want sweets at the end of the day because of all the decisions we had to make throughout the day.

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 11/13/2011

Culture

• Overpopulation is a myth.  [H/T Nathan Blackerby]  I’ll let you judge it for yourself.  (now in blogroll)  Episode 1 is below: 
• Could this be the answer on how Stonehenge was created?  

Economics

• Economic complexity in terms of exports and imports.
• Harvard economist Niall Ferguson gives his take on why the economy hasn’t been getting better.  He offers some recommendations as well: 
• John Rawls and Occupy Wall Street.

Philosophers

• Check out various philosophers’ “social networks”: 

Politics

• Overview of governmental spending.
• How does the American public rate the news media?
• Religion playing a role in politics: 

Science

• EEG finds consciousness in people in vegetative state by using a simple bedside device.  [H/T Dan Vecchio].  By reading the article, one can respond to various stimuli in the environment and by reading the brain, the patient is responding.  From reading the article, it’s certainly an advancement in technology, but being the patient must be tortuous.  Imagine that one is conscious but could not move nor respond to people “out there.”  This seems worse than Locked-In Syndrome.  Thankfully, the doctors are trying to fit the pieces together to help out these patients.
• Awesome viewing of a murmuration of starlings.  Very beautiful: 
• Improve your memory by moving your eyes back and forth for 30 seconds, but only if you’re right handed.

Sexuality

• 
  On PhilosTV, Simon May and Elizabeth Brake discuss marriage.  Around 4:30, they talk about same-sex marriage in which both are in favor of based on political liberalism (meaning that the state is neutral when it comes to a conception of the human good).  They consider objections to same-sex marriage and they both show that those objections don’t work.  Around 13:00, May raises a concern on whether the public should give a positive recognition to same-sex couples in the same way we give opposite-sex couples, thereby giving up political liberalism as a foundation.  Brake’s reply is that previous types of marriages have been considered wrong and it was unjust that the state did not intervene, and so the state can uphold a sense of justice while still remaining neutral.  Also, one can still embrace a sense of care to same-sex couples without endorsing a conception of the human good.  May brings up another possible objection at 17:06, why should the state remain neutral?  Why can’t the state say that an activity is a moral good and so the state should endorse it?  Brake’s reply is that everyone has different moral and religious views that if the state endorses a view, then it’s favoring one side of the human good.  If so, the state is not treating the citizens as equals.  Around 21:39, May brings up a concern that if the state should remain neutral, wouldn’t this mean that polygamy would be allowed?  But polygamy has been traditionally been a patriarchal institution which doesn’t seem to benefit anyone.  Brake replies that neutrality would hold that polygamy should be allowed.  This would include polyandory, polyamory, or simply groups.  One could visualize that they are all equal instead of one as the head of the marriage.  To be neutral is to extend marriage to all groups.  The state right now doesn’t make patriarchal marriage between two people, the same is said for group marriages as well.  There are, after all, egalitarian group marriages.  The typical argument from conservatives is, “If we allow same-sex marriage, then we must allow polygamy.”  To which Brake replies, “of course.”  This changes when it comes to children, however.  Around 34:28, May brings up the argument that if the state should remain neutral when it comes to marriage, why does the state even need to get involved in marriage in the first place?  Why does the state need to get in the marriage business?  After all, there is no public recognition for making friends, so why marriage?  Why have a law of marriage at all?  Brake admits that this is a challenge and she brings up a lot of interesting authors and philosophers that bring up the same challenge that May brought up.  However, some possible reasons why that state should still get involved in marriage is that the citizens prefer them.  It is here that Brake brings up her solution: minimal marriage: the state is required to support all sorts of relationships.  This would include all sorts of groups, no matter the number, tribes, and even non-sexual friendships where they live together.  It would give more entitlements to these type of relationships.  At 45:40, May brings up an egoist argument, why should I care about these other type of caring relationships?  And at 47:06, May asks if these other relationships are just as good as marriage?  Does care need to be expanded out?  If so, this doesn’t seem neutral.  Brake replies using Rawls suggesting that there are primary goods and one of these (controversial) primary goods is the state making sure that you can live out your life in order for you to reach your conception of the good.  One of these are caring relationships; that is, a caring relationship is a primary good.  She relates it with self-esteem where being in a caring relationship reinforces a sense of value to oneself.  The state can distribute the social bases for a caring relationship.  Around 54:50, May brings up the issue of polygamy.  Usually, polygamy is circumscribed around cultural practices which has significant meanings.  If so, then it’s implicitly suggesting that this is more valuable than other forms of relationships.  This could create an asymmetry within marriage.  Brake’s reply that this could happen within monogamous marriage, thus that faces the same challenge.  May replies that it’s not inherent within monogamy whereas it’s within polygamy because of the cultural practices.  Overall, this was a great discussion and it has inspired me to read both May’s and Brake’s works.
• Cuba is ready to fight prostitution the Swedish way: penalizing the clients instead of the sex workers.

Let’s See What’s In the News Today: 11/06/2011

Abortion

• World map of abortion laws.

Culture

• Everyone laments that the world is overpopulated since the world has reached 7 billion people.  But what if it turns out the world is actually underpopulated?
• 10,000 Solutions is a site that Arizona State University has launched where anyone in the world can give a solution facing the world, like sustainability or the future of education, and it offers a $10,000 prize.   More than that, participants are encouraged to collaborate and build on one another’s solutions. ASU wants to create an open solutions bank that others can use to generate new ideas, and some students at ASU have already met up in person to talk over things they shared on the site. The school is promoting 10,000 Solutions as an experiment in collaborative invention and the National Science Foundation is funding a team of ASU researchers to study the contest and see how ideas are shared and developed.
• See what the world is projected to look like by the year 2050.
• Wow.  Seven-year old girl forced to work as a nightclub dancer to support her disabled parents.
• Are we living in a world with information apartheid?  Sandra Fisher-Martins makes a compelling argument that the daily, public documents have so much jargon and complexity that only a portion of the population can truly understand it.  These include insurances, tenet leases, sub-prime mortgages.  We need a culture of clarity.  So how do we do this?  One is to raise literacy levels.  Of course this needs to be done, but it’s slow and hard.  Moreover, even with having high literacy rates doesn’t get rid of the misunderstandings of complex documents.  For those who are in college or above, read your insurance claims or mortgage documents.  The other solution is to lower the complexity of the documents, to make it in simple language, so that it’s more accessible.  Indeed, Fisher-Martin argues that everyone has a right to understand: 

Economics

• The true cost of commuting.  You could buy a house $15,900 more if you moved one mile closer to your job. [H/T Nathan Blackerby]
• Milton Wolf, cousin of President Obama, challenges the Occupy movement and asks them to join the Tea Party.  The goals are the same, it’s just that the Occupy movement is confused on what they are against: “It’s time to end crony capitalism. The occupiers, it seems, have confused crony capitalism with capitalism. One is tyranny. The other is freedom. One is autocracy. The other is the free market. Crony capitalism is to capitalism, as blogger Diana Hsieh says, as sea horses are to horses. America gasps for a return to free-market capitalism. Americans suffer today not because of the free market but because of a lack of access to it.”

Ethics

• Is oxytocin the “moral molecule?”  

Humor

• Women struggling to drink water.  Many lolz here.

Logic

• Measure of Doubt has an interesting analogy on believing contradictory things by using the Penrose Triangle as an example.

Philosophy

• Bertrand Russell owes his life to smoking: 

Politics

• A libertarian defense of sweatshops.
• A UN Special Rapporteur calls for a halt on restricting access to abortion, for full access to contraceptive methods, and for complete and accurate information on sexual health.
• Britain has gotten rid of male primogeniture.
• Steven Landsburgh has ranked the Republican presidential candidates’ tax plans.  The best?  Johnson and Cain.  The worst?  Romney.

Polyamory

• Anderson Cooper interviews a polyamorous couple.

Religion

• William Lane Craig and Stephen Law had a recent religious debate.  You can see the debate mapped out here.

Science

• Theoretical physicist Brian Greene presents The Fabric of the Cosmos, a four-part look at the “mind-boggling reality beneath the surface of our everyday world.” The first segment, “What Is Space?”. Then come the remaining installments – “The Illusion of Time” (11/9), “Quantum Leap” (11/16), and “Universe or Multiverse?” (11/23). If you can’t catch the episodes on TV, they will be streamed online too at video.pbs.org.  See the preview below: 

Sexuality

• Where gay couples can adopt: 
• “Do you believe that women should have the right to:
• Vote?
• Go to college?
• Drive a car?
• Open bank accounts in their own names?
• Enjoy sex?
• Work in whatever occupation they might choose, and get paid the same as men when they do the same work?

Did you answer yes?  Then you better lie down. . . . You’ve probably caught feminism.“

• Wanna solve America’s teen sex problem?  Perhaps having the mentality of the Dutch may be useful: “Schalet’s book compares the sexual attitudes of American and Dutch parents and her findings are nothing short of staggering: Whereas most American parents panic about the idea of allowing their kids to have sex with other kids under their roof, for many Dutch parents, it’s not only fine — it’s responsible parenting.”
• Kansas panel advices both boys and girls to get the HPV vaccination.
• Girl Scouts of Colorado accepts transgender children.
• The study that shows women on the pill pick bad sexual partners is being questioned.
• Interesting.  A slew of letters of men who go to strip clubs.
• Lesbian couple crowned Homecoming king and queen.

Vegetarianism

• A Prezi show on why vegetarianism is great, but also obligatory.
• Our society has made eating meat the norm to the point that animal lovers are seen as crazy.  On top of that, she’s an excellent philosopher too.

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 10/23/2011

Anti-Natalism

• Is anti-natalism unthinkable or dangerous?  David Benatar says no.
• Philosopher Jean Kazez argues that pitting the Green anti-natalist against the Gray pro-natalist, the gray would win.  Interesting comments as well.  Looks like I’m going to have to study Cornucopianism.  However, I still believe that Benatar has replied against this.

Culture

• Barbie gets a renovation.                             It’s $50 and it sold out quickly.

Economics

• Read or listen to an interview of Wapshott, who wrote a book about Keynes and Hayek, the two economists who have transformed modern economics.
• Occupy George gives you infographics: 
• Do you need a loan but the bank won’t give you one?  Perhaps you should look at Starbucks as being the middleman.  ”Starbucks is going to create a mechanism that will allow us citizens to do what the government and the banks won’t: lend money to small businesses. “
• “I could end the deficit in 5 minutes…You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election”: 
• Chris Hedges is eloquent in this interview about Occupy Wall Street, the banks, and bailouts, and the problems of the economic crisis: 
• Attractive people make more money than their ugly counterparts.  Labor economist Daniel Hamermesh wants to make the ugly people a disabled minority.

Ethics

• A very nice account on how objectification and being objectified may not necessarily be ethically wrong.

Food

• Chart pertaining to each candy bar.  Or go here to see the details.

Gender

• Debunking six gender-role myths.  Or get the cliff notes version.

Love

• Sternberg’s triangle of love:

Movies

• Need a good Halloween flick but can’t tell which genre to go for?  Go here.

Philosophy

• The Atheist Scholar is an academic resource for those who want to have a serious study of atheism.
• Do you need to know what the philosophers say in a strict premise-conclusion argumentative format?  Go here.

Politics

• Rawls on Wall Street.
• Santorum pledges to repeal all federal funding of contraception because sex should only be about procreation.

Polyamory

• “We try to be monogamous, but we’re not very good at it.”

Psychology

• The science is still sketchy on whether animals can grieve or not, but it’s still a great read about how this is possible.
• Turns out that “Sybil” may have been faking her multiple personalities.
• I can’t tell if this is a joke or not, but it’s in a serious peer-reviewed journal.  This article in only one page long, but this is how I aspire to write journal articles.  The title is Reasons that Life is Difficult.

Religion

• Now you see the positive and negative sentiments in the bible.  The black is the positive, the red is the negative.  See the details here.  

Science

• So do you remember how the scientific community was surprised at finding neutrinos faster than the speed of light?  Well, it could turn out to be false.  Why so?  The neutrinos only seemed to be going faster than the speed of light, but that’s because they forgot to add one small calculation, which is…relativity.  To be more specific, clocks closer on earth go faster because of the gravitational pull, and so traveling from France to Italy will definitely have different times based the altitude of the clock.  From the article: “If it stands up, this episode will be laden with irony. Far from breaking Einstein’s theory of relatively, the faster-than-light measurement will turn out to be another confirmation of it.”
• Fun stuff with superconductivity: 
• Robot solves the Rubik’s Cube in five seconds: 

Sexuality

• Men may be more likely to find more sex partners in times of economic crisis.  Of course, there are many questions that need to be asked.  For example, sexual response does not mean sexual behavior, and the study only focuses on heterosexual men.
• As mentioned before, the FBI was considering of changing the federal definition of rape.  Now, it has changed it.  Before, the definition was “the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.”  This excluded statutory rape, same-sex rape, forced anal or oral sex, rape with an object and victims who are male or transgender or have disabilities, not to mention those who have taken drugs or alcohol and therefore had their ability to consent  “diminished”.  The changed definition is now: “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.”
• The more power one has, the more likely one will have infidelities.  It doesn’t even matter what the gender is.
• Turns out that younger women are viewing porn more than men, according to one study: 
• Speaking of porn, here is a book review of an anti-porn book.  The review basically says that the book is lacking evidence.
• A lot of internet searches peak on Mondays searching for STI information.  Why so?  Many speculate that after a weekend of fun, they become concerned about possible infections they may have contracted.

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 10/16/2011

Books

• Nice!  Camus’ The Fall has been turned into a 5-minute animation.  Note: this will only make sense if you’ve read the book.  Otherwise, you might be lost: 

Culture

• Alcohol does not cause violence, promiscuity, or anti-social behavior.  Rather, it’s your cultural expectation of imbibing alcohol. As the article puts it:
  

  The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol.There is enormous cross-cultural variation in the way people behave when they drink alcohol. There are some societies (such as the UK, the US, Australia and parts of Scandinavia) that anthropologists call “ambivalent” drinking-cultures, where drinking is associated with disinhibition, aggression, promiscuity, violence and anti-social behaviour.

  There are other societies (such as Latin and Mediterranean cultures in particular, but in fact the vast majority of cultures), where drinking is not associated with these undesirable behaviours – cultures where alcohol is just a morally neutral, normal, integral part of ordinary, everyday life – about on a par with, say, coffee or tea. These are known as “integrated” drinking cultures.

• Seriously?  Wow!  Topeka, Kansas decriminalized domestic battery!  Reason: they need to cut budgets.
• Chart of Life Expectancy of the entire world.

Economics

• 10 Essential Fiscal Charts.  Or you can go here to see each individual chart.
• There is a U-shaped relationship between a woman’s education and how much children she will produce: “The women having the least number of children are those that started college but did not finish (1.79 on average). The next lowest group is women who have a college degree (1.93). And among women with education greater than high school, the ones with the most children are those with advanced college degrees (1.98).”  So having more education correlates with having a larger family.  This goes against the conventional idea that the more education a woman has, the less children she will have.  However, the downfall is that the study has made the father’s work hours fixed in order to look closer at women’s work habits.

Gender

• Ha! Ryan Gosling + Feminism = Awesome.  Below is my favorite one:

Global Warming

• Practically arguing about global warming.

Logic

• If someone doesn’t come to the rational conclusion based on argumentation, should you be dick about it?  In other words, how offensive should you be when you argue with someone?  It’s not a simple answer.

Love

• What does it mean to experience love?  You can listen to an interview from philosopher Troy Jollimore which he wrote a book on the topic.

Movies

• It’s been a while since I’ve seen the film The Tree of Life, but this is a nice review claiming that it’s a way to explain troubled faith.

Philosophy

• Oh boy.  I just found out that Schopenhauer is being offered as a class at my university.  I’m excited and to get you excited, here’s an interview with one of the biographers of Schopenhauer.  By the way, the biography is an excellent read.
• Alvin Plantinga has an air conditioning problem: 

Politics

• Looks like someone started a blog about philosophers showing solidarity about occupying Wall Street [H/T to Greg Spendlove].  I’m sure there will be on about the 53 percenters sometime soon, along with the reply to the 53 percenters.
• The USA still leads in Nobel Prizes.
• So what exactly are the Wall Street Protesters so angry about?  These charts should help.

Science

• Amazing.  Scientists have a skin cell gun where it replaces burned skin within days, not weeks or months like the traditional method.    Seriously, this guy doesn’t even look like he got burned.
• If you present a study to a group of people, they won’t be impressed.  If, however, you present the study with neuroscience–even if the neuroscience is irrelevant (!)–then the group of people are wowed by it.
• How to get something from nothing.  Book will come out on the subject as well: 

Sexuality

• New research has shown that birth control beads are 95 percent effective against pregnancy, more effective than the condom.
• “Women who take the Pill tend to choose as partners men who are less attractive and worse in bed but a sounder bet for a long-term relationship.”  The reasoning behind this is that women are looking for stable men in relationships to take care of possible future children while on the Pill.  It offers some advice on whether one should pursue the relationship or not.  At the same time, it may dampen sexual satisfaction, but it strengthens relationships.
• It seems that safe sex is becoming more accepted for teens with their first time experience.
• Another study suggesting that the more porn a society has, rape and violence go down.
• Research shows that casual sex has no increased risk for psychological harm.

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 10/09/2011

Ethics

• A new game called SPENT puts you in the position of a person who’s going to be homeless person.  The makers of the game says that their goal is to challenge the way you think about poverty and homelessness.The goal of game is to place you in the position of having lost your job, your savings and being down to your last $1000 dollars.  Basically, you’re not homeless, but you’re on the verge of becoming homeless.  Try to last one month.  Unfortunately, this is the reality for many people in the US today.  Play it.  See if you can last. 

Gender

• French Feminists way “non” to the word “mademoiselle.”  It has reacted from the Dominique Strauss-Kahn scandal.

Health

• You can get rid of vaccine scares by using a little logic and investigation: 

Law

• The Supreme Court of the United States starts its new term and many issues are on the agenda including: immigration, same-sex marriage, President Obama’s healthcare overhaul, affirmative action, Medicaid, warrant searches, strip searches, expletive words in the media, free speech, and environmental issues.

Logic

• Great videos on detecting fallacies: 

Marriage

• Mexico is thinking of making marriages based on renewable two-year contracts.

Politics

• Ha!  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this bit of news.  It reads like it’s from The Onion.  It’s still satire though.

Relationships

• Wow.  Get paid to go on a first date.  The site touts that it solves the problems of hookups from other websites.  However, I think it’ll just either exacerbate it or else this site will eventually be known for hookups.  Click on “How it Works” to watch the details.

Science

• Computer genius and revolutionizer died.
• It’s probably not worth finding extraterrestrial life.

Sexuality

• The FBI is moving to change the federal definition of rape for the first time in 80 years.
• Britain is considering legalizing gay marriage.  ”I support gay marriage because I am a conservative.”  Wow!

War

• A lot of interesting graphs about civilian and military views post-9/11.

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 10/02/2011

Books

• Google puts the Dead Sea Scrolls online (in high resolution).
• Guide to fantasy and/or sci-fi books.

Economics

• When it comes to economics, “we’re all Mormons now.”
• Studies show that when women take on their husbands’ last name, she gets lower wages and lower job offers.

Emotions

• Got a case of the Mondays?  Proof that Mondays do suck based on two Cornell researchers.

Food

• How a cereal box is made.
• How to Peel the Head of a Garlic in less than 10 seconds: 

Health

• A protein structure in the AIDS development has stumped scientists for years.  It took three weeks for online gamers to decode that protein structure.
• Spain develops a powerful prototype for an AIDS vaccine.  It has a 90 percent effective rate.

Middle East

• Women in Saudi Arabia are given the chance to vote and run elections.

Politics

• A libertarian argument against the death penalty.
• A libertarian argument for environmental regulation.  Good comments as well.
• Because many people argued against it, here are the responses to the replies against the libertarian argument for environmental regulation.
• Sociologists have invented the invisibility cloak.
• Steven Pinker shows that as time goes on, the world gets more peaceful.  (Seriously, you should check it out.  It’s got a lot of great graphs.)  Violence has gone down a lot!  We just don’t believe it because the media shows a lot of it, and because our biological urges makes it seem that we are more violent:  [H/T Daniel Farmer]
• The President of Iran has made so many controversial statements about 9/11 that even al-Qaeda is saying enough is enough.

Relationships

• How to break up.
• 10 Realistic Rules for living a non-monogamous relationship.
• Judge in Botswana got tired of hearing about polygamous squabbles, so he declared monogamy as the rule.
• A student at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is looking for polyamorus people in multiple relationships for a student documentary.  Get the details here.
• Rationality and Romance.

Science

• The McGurk Effect is trippy: 
• In the same vain as askphilosophers.org, you can know ask a mathematician or ask a physicist for your scientific or mathematical questions.  (now in blogroll)  I’m hoping that an ask an economist website will come out soon.

Sexuality

• Survey shows that more youngsters are having unsafe sex.  I was actually surprised by France: it has gone up 111 percent!
• An interesting take on the science of kissing.  I’m definitely buying the book.  Here’s the video: 
• Although it was under the raider, the NFL has added sexual orientation as a form of discrimination.
• Washington, D.C. will require public students to take a standardized sex ed test.  Can you pass the test?
• Republicans actually supported Planned Parenthood back in the 70s.
• Australia announced that women can join combat forces in their army.
• Close to home.  The Utah Undie Run for Protesting Utah’s “Uptight” Laws grabbed a lot of headlines.  I wish I was there.  The headlines include local news, of course, but it went worldwide reaching Germany, Australia, Britain, Indonesia, Taiwan, Metro UK, Switzerland, and reaching the HuffPost and Bill O’Reilly (about four minutes in).  If they do this again, I would love to attend.  Photos and video here.  This may also reach Guinness Book of World Records.  They’re doing it again on August 25, 2012.  I predict it’ll be bigger and better.

Let’s See What’s in the News Today: 09/24/2011

Science

• Could this prove Einstein’s theory that light is the only absolute constant in the universe wrong?
• Speaking of proving scientific theories wrong, this could prove that we need to rethink dark matter. [H/T Daniel Vecchio]

Sexuality

• Modern day Lysistrata in the Dado village in the Philippines:

Singlism

• This week was National Single and Unmarried Americans Week.  Here’s a great pieceabout how marriage equality still leaves the singles behind, where it’s forming a culture that if one is single, then there must be something wrong with you.  Less and less people are getting married, and so this may have cultural signification.  Indeed, unmarried people actually contribute more:
  

  [S]ingle people often contribute more to the community — because once people marry, they tend to put their energy and focus into their partners and their own families at the expense of friendships, community ties and extended families.

  In a report released this week by the Council on Contemporary Families, Dr. Gerstel notes that while 68 percent of married women offer practical or routine help to their parents, 84 percent of the never-married do. Just 38 percent of married men help their parents, compared with 67 percent of never-married men. Even singles who have children are more likely than married people to contribute outside their immediate family.

  “It’s the unmarried, with or without kids, who are more likely to take care of other people,” Dr. Gerstel said. “It’s not having children that isolates people. It’s marriage.”

  The unmarried also tend to be more connected with siblings, nieces and nephews. And while married people have high rates of volunteerism when it comes to taking part in their children’s activities, unmarried people often are more connected to the community as a whole. About 1 in 5 unmarried people take part in volunteer work like teaching, coaching other people’s children, raising money for charities and distributing or serving food.

  Unmarried people are more likely to visit with neighbors. And never-married women are more likely than married women to sign petitions and go to political gatherings, according to Dr. Gerstel.

  However, the biggest plight is single woman.  They are more often stigmatized.  Again, my heros–Bella DePaulo and Stephanie Coontz–report that these practices and laws are outdated.  Married people don’t have special status qua married people.

• Many in the Gen X crowd are opting out of having kids.

Will

• In a previous post, I talked about will power and the weakness of the will.  I also asked whether this was akin to a muscle where one can strengthen or weaken will power.  Well, there’s a new book coming out on just that topic.  I will definitely purchase.  [H/T Daniel Farmer]