aphar

11:58 pm: - Why is it so hard?!
- Что?
- Life!!
- Ты забыла добавить эмфатическое междометье "бля".

10:23 pm: Reporters just don’t have the guts to ask the tough questions anymore.
http://unclemeat.wordpress.com/2007/10/24/calgary-sun-pulls-levant-story/

The school bus accident ... that killed a nine-year-old child and wounded others was a sorrowful tragedy. The amount of media coverage of the accident was appropriate: children should never pre-decease their parents.

... radio stations, newspapers and TV news covered the event exhaustively – inspecting every detail, and asking good questions about how such accidents might be avoided in the future.

Every detail was examined except one: the woman who was the school bus driver was wearing a Muslim-style head covering that blocked her peripheral vision.

( Read more... )
Ten years ago, to say that head scarves on bus drivers should be prohibited would have been uncontroversial. But to say so today is to be called Islamophobic – even if the bus driver in question was not a Muslim.

The bus driver has been charged; we’ll know what the justice system says caused the crash. But for the dozen reporters there, they’d rather find any other reason than a head scarf – even a non-religious head scarf worn by a non-Muslim – than to admit that there are simply some parts of modern, secular society where it is inappropriate – and even dangerous – to allow politically correct multiculturalism to trump common sense.

03:28 pm: Finding the Switch
Homosexuality may persist because the associated genes convey surprising advantages on homosexuals' family members.

Studies suggest there is a genetic basis for homosexuality in only 50 percent of gay men.

( Read more... )
Camperio says his results can explain no more than 20 percent of the incidence of homosexuality.

( Read more... )

For every older brother a man has, his chances of being gay go up by around a third.( Read more... ) Even if the immunization scenario is true, however, it explains only 15 to 30 percent of the cases of male homosexuality.( Read more... )

11:09 pm:

02:07 pm: http://igor-torick.livejournal.com/374932.html

гвозди бы делать из этих людей...

01:37 pm: global cooling
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

the current "global warming" frenzy appears to be on a much higher level than what we had in 1970ies, but I hope both are equally unjustified.

11:16 pm: LJ-backup.sh
I use linux, and I don't want to use a fancy-shmancy gui to backup my lj entries.
I want to use cron.
so here is what I do:

$ mkdir -p ~/save/lj
$ lj-backup.sh aphar 2008-06-01 mypassword
$ crontab -e

add this line

35 6 1 * *   /home/sds/bin/lj-backup.sh aphar

this is it: once a month the entries for the previous month are downloaded and zipped into an annual archive.

http://sds.podval.org/data/lj-backup.sh

11:46 am: Opera tribute not too inconvenient for Gore
http://music.guardian.co.uk/classical/story/0,,2283007,00.html

The legendary La Scala opera house in Milan has commissioned a full-length work to be based on [Gore's] book, An Inconvenient Truth, and the Oscar-winning documentary of the same title. ... La Scala's artistic director, Stephane Lissner, told a press conference the new opera had been commissioned from an Italian composer, Giorgio Battistelli. He said it would be staged in 2011.

Some people never learn. In 3 years, chances are the main issue will be global cooling, not global warming, so the opera would have to be rewritten...

11:44 am: Stature and Status: Height, Ability, and Labor Market Outcomes
http://www.nber.org/papers/w12466

It has long been recognized that taller adults hold jobs of higher status and, on average, earn more than other workers. A large number of hypotheses have been put forward to explain the association between height and earnings. In developed countries, researchers have emphasized factors such as self esteem, social dominance, and discrimination. In this paper, we offer a simpler explanation: On average, taller people earn more because they are smarter. As early as age 3 — before schooling has had a chance to play a role — and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests. The correlation between height in childhood and adulthood is approximately 0.7 for both men and women, so that tall children are much more likely to become tall adults. As adults, taller individuals are more likely to select into higher paying occupations that require more advanced verbal and numerical skills and greater intelligence, for which they earn handsome returns. Using four data sets from the US and the UK, we find that the height premium in adult earnings can be explained by childhood scores on cognitive tests. Furthermore, we show that taller adults select into occupations that have higher cognitive skill requirements and lower physical skill demands.

03:58 pm: The freedom to say 'no'
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/18/the_freedom_to_say_no/?page=full

Why aren't there more women in science and engineering? Controversial new research suggests: They just aren't interested.

Rosenbloom and his colleagues used a standard personality-inventory test to measure people's preferences for different kinds of work. In general, Rosenbloom's study found, men and women who enjoyed the explicit manipulation of tools or machines were more likely to choose IT careers - and it was mostly men who scored high in this area. Meanwhile, people who enjoyed working with others were less likely to choose IT careers. Women, on average, were more likely to score high in this arena.

Personal preference, Rosenbloom and his group concluded, was the single largest determinative factor in whether women went into IT. They calculated that preference accounted for about two-thirds of the gender imbalance in the field. The study was published in November in the Journal of Economic Psychology.

It may seem like a cliche - or rank sexism - to say women like to work with people, and men prefer to work with things. Rosenbloom acknowledges that, but says that whether due to socialization or "more basic differences," the genders on average demonstrate different vocational interests.

"It sounds like stereotypes," he said in an interview, "but these stereotypes have a germ of truth."

In the language of the social sciences, Rosenbloom found that the women were "self-selecting" out of IT careers. The concept of self-selection has long interested social scientists as an explanation for how groups sort themselves over time. Since human beings are heterogeneous, self-selection predicts that when offered a menu of options and freedom of choice, people will make diverse choices and sort themselves out in nonrandom ways. In other words, even given the same opportunities, not everybody will do the same thing - and there are measurable reasons that they will act differently from one another.

11:51 am: Всеме недовольным своими in-laws:
http://www.anekdot.ru/an/an0805/o080527.html#14

Фильм ужасов. Свекровь как всегда отмочила. Просили ж внуков не
пугать... Со слов свидетеля-мужа:
Внучка (3 годика) в первый раз приехала к бабушке-дедушке в другой город
(до этого знала их по редким однодневным визитам, а гостить к ним ездили
ее старшие братья, к слову постоянно с какими-то фобиями
возвращающиеся). В первый же вечер играет с бабушкой, и расшалившись,
врезается головой бабуле в лицо. Бабушка, которой даже и больно-то не
было, начинает голосить, вынимает из рта вставную челюсть: "Смотри, ты
мне все зубы выбила!" Девочка моя с остекленевшими глазенками медленно
поворачивается и, сорвавшись с места, взбирается, как по дереву, папе на
руки, дрожа и подвывая: "я не хотела бабушке больно делать!"
Бабуля - медик, хирург. Это шутки у них такие, куда бы деться, блин?!..

09:02 pm: Ася читает первого гарипота.
Часто спрашивает незнакомые слова.
Например:
- Что такое "боу"?
- "bow" - кланяться.
- А, "бау", понятно!
И так 18 раз, например "анкаун релатион" (неизвестный родич - кстати, бритишизм)...
Часто достаточно правильно прочитать слово, и она его узнаёт.
Другая проблема в том, я зачастую читаю не так как она привыкла (у неё уже неплохой Нью-Йоркский диалект, а у меня ещё иногда проскальзывают бритишизмы).

09:16 pm:

Я проверил свои знания русского языка и получил пятерку. Сходи, проверься?

06:19 pm: перекликается с известным анекдотом про "научиться жить под водой за 3 дня":

— А какие книги ты взял бы с собой на необитаемый остров? Я взяла бы Пруста, Бланшо, Маркеса и Бодлера.
— Я взял бы книги по сельскому хозяйству, ботанический атлас и медицинский справочник. А ты умрёшь.

01:58 pm: why do progressives hate Israel?
Israel should be the poster child of the progressives all over the world - it's the only liberal democracy in the region, the only place where gay rights, minority rights and women rights are respected, the only place with freedom of speech (and freedom after speech too!)
So why do the progressives all over the world hate Israel so passionately?
My brilliant wife offered a simple explanation: all politics is local, so the progressives hate Israel because their domestic opponents, e.g., evangelicals in the US, support her; or because huge local minorities, e.g., moslems in Europe, hate Israel, and the progressives want to capitalize of their support.
what do you think?

05:09 pm: time machine: Husbands, rate your wives
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2008/05/marriage.html

( return to 1939 )

10:13 am: http://www.snopes.com/weddings/newlywed/advice.asp

11:55 am: 'My daughter deserved to die for falling in love'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/11/iraq.humanrights

17-year-old student Rand Abdel-Qader was beaten to death by her father after becoming infatuated with a British soldier in Basra... For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. 'If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,' he said with no trace of remorse... Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. 'They are men and know what honour is,' he said.

11:36 am: - So whats the difference between the mormons and the muslims?
- The mormons want their 72 virgins now!

01:18 pm: "The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."
-- James Madison