Web Frog

Comments are fucked

Earlier today, when I, or anyone, posted a comment on this blog...all the comments for that post were instantly wiped! I don't know whether it's malicious or not, but Web Frog comments are fucked, and I've disabled them until I upgrade Movable Type. Sorry about that, I feel terrible that I've lost some of them. :-(

b3ta

* HIDDEN MESSAGES - TV ad secret Jew hate
* TATTOO - Bloke with 'stupid' on head
* ANGRY - Rolf Harris seal protest
B3TA : NEWSLETTER : "PEPTO-BISMOL ICE CREAM - YUMMY"

Shock photos of Israeli bombing of Lebanon

From Israel To Lebanon
Link thanks to Tristán
Site may be slow or down.

The Blue Book of the Alcoholic

"There are plenty of bastards who drink moderately," writer Sergei Korovin comments. "Of course, I don't consider them to be people. They are not our comrades."
The Moscow Times
Thanks to Cliff.

Middle East crisis

• Ordinary Lebanese civilians have been the main victims of the current crisis.
• 500,000 are displaced internally in the country.
• The Lebanese government is almost powerless to influence Hezbollah anyway.
• The conflict could spread.
• Stop the War Coalition

When Man Mated Monkey

"Icky as it sounds, we mingled across species in the past, which could help us win evolution wars in the future."
Los Angeles Times

Children's ideas about fairness may depend on race

'One of the first studies ever to examine the development of "modern racism" in children finds that by fourth grade, children are making decisions about fairness that take race into account. This finding, from researchers at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., is published in the July/August issue of the journal Child Development.'
EurekAlert!
"the researchers evaluated 87 white children" Why? The assumption that only white children can be racist is both unscientific and racist in itself.

IQ and Intelligence

Two “consensus” definitions of intelligence:
"Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—“catching on,” “making sense” of things, or “figuring out” what to do."
Gottfredson (1997)

"Individuals differ from one another in their ability to understand complex ideas, to adapt effectively to the environment, to learn from experience, to engage in various forms of reasoning, to overcome obstacles by taking thought. Although these individual differences can be substantial, they are never entirely consistent: A given person’s intellectual performance will vary on different occasions, in different domains, as judged by different criteria. Concepts of “intelligence” are attempts to clarify and organize this complex set of phenomena."
Neisser, et al. (1996)

IQ is not simply a measure of intelligence, it is the most accurate (i.e. reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments at predicting the performance of simple tasks, academic success, job performance, health, longevity, functional literacy, socioeconomic advancement, “social pathologies” and brain size.

The differences are partly genetic and partly environmental. The evidence suggests that 50%-80% of the group differences in average IQ is genetic. The heritability of IQ changes with age: in childhood it is about 0.45; by late adolescence it is around 0.75. The rest is due to the environment.

IQ was normalized to obtain a mean scores of 100 using UK data, but varies globally; the average human IQ is presently 88.8.
Africa (excluding Northern Africa): 68.6
Eastern Asia (excluding China): 105.2
Southern Asia: 81.0
Europe: 98.6

The understanding and acceptance of the fact that intelligence is largely genetic has social and policy implications. Most importantly, significant differences in the intelligence of different individuals brought up in a similar environment are natural and to be expected. Therefore, accusations of laziness on the part of an individual, blame on the part of the parents or moral culpability on the part of the state are all unwarranted.

Top 10 most expensive cars in the world

AutoMotoPortal.com

Inequality: Men and Women

Why are there two sexes?
Imagine a population of hermaphrodites. Some will be genetically biased towards putting more time and effort into mating, their genes will thrive as they inseminate many others. Others will be biased towards expending energy by producing eggs and bearing babies, they will also be genetically successful as can do their best to ensure their children survive. Those individuals who lie in the middle, and specialise in neither activity, will die out. The first type leads to a small active gamete, the second a larger, static gamete. The union of two unequal gametes in reproduction is known as anisogamy. Inter-sex competition ensures that this dichotomy persists. Thus was born man and woman.

Why are we (especially men) overconfident?
Due to conflicts between predator and prey, group living and the competition for reproduction, deception has evolved under natural selection, and as a consequence, so has the capacity to detect deceit. The easiest way of avoiding detection is to effectively lie to ourselves. This is known as self-deception. So, not only do we wish to appear (genetically) fitter than others (this has obvious advantages when it comes to sexual selection), but we actually believe that we are. Self-deception leads to overconfidence.

Ladies First
The fundamental difference between the sexes is that the female will always be the limiting sex in reproduction. This places women in a privileged position. Women wish to attract high status men (plus reliability for long-term partners) and to achieve this they simply need to appear youthful, look attractive and behave selfishly. Women are more than twice as likely as men to initiate domestic violence and more than twice as likely to use weapons in domestic violence.

Disadvantaged Men
Men are forever motivated to compete with other men in order to attain mate value. They will seek to improve their apparent status and are best equipped to do this via self-deception and subsequent overconfidence. Men expose themselves to all types of risks in competition with other men and are far more likely than women to die prematurely. They also have to incur the costs of providing resources. Women and high status men ensure that all societies are set up with a primary goal of preventing the majority of males from expressing their sexuality in anything but a minimal way. The upshot of this is that the most disadvantaged in society are low status men (and even high-status men are forced to compete and take risks to attain that status). They are granted no privileges, are invisible to the rest of society, take demeaning jobs, go to war, etc. Is it any wonder that men are sixteen times more likely than women to go to prison? To make matters worse, the current political climate heaps more privilege upon the already privileged.

Why There are More Men in Higher Office and/or Science

• Motivation. Men have to compete with other men for status and this translates directly into men contesting each other for positions within organisations. There is no parallel for women.
• Brains. There are large sex differences in IQ-related grey/white matter which produces radically different cognitive styles which result in men being better equipped to tackle science.
• Distribution. When various traits (including IQ) are measured, men tend to have a larger variance than women. This translates into a larger percentage of men to be expected in both tails, so we would expect more men present at the highest levels.

The Happy Planet Index

(Un)Happy Planet Index

full report (.pdf)

Zidane - UPDATED!

YouTube: ZIDANE a new way to solve problems.. make it like zidane

Zidane headbutt outrage: new video evidence | The Register

Cognitive Dissonance

Do you believe in freedom? Do you believe in equality? Yes and yes? How could any intelligent, educated and compassionate person say no? How could any student say no? All good students simultaneously embrace socialism (promoting equality) and liberalism (promoting liberty). That way we have both fair processes and fair outcomes. We have both equal rights and equal outcomes.

There is only one snag: the above only works in one special case: when everyone is equal.

In 1956 the US psychologist Leon Festinger introduced a new concept in social psychology: the theory of cognitive dissonance. When two simultaneously held cognitions are inconsistent, this will produce a state of cognitive dissonance. Because the experience of dissonance is unpleasant, the person will strive to reduce it by changing their beliefs.

Any suggestion that people are not equal creates cognitive dissonance, ergo we apply self-deception and fool ourselves into believing that everyone is equal. The problem is that evolution doesn't do equality. As Richard Dawkins observed, "the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

Birth of a Friend's Charity Blog

"Help us raise funds for our charity parachute jump for The British Heart Foundation!"
(although it appears to be mostly about sushi)
Jump for Joy!

Zinedine Zidane headbutt - UPDATED!

Revealed: The disgusting abuse that sparked Zidane's fury | the Daily Mail

YouTube

Read my lips: the taunt that made Zidane snap - Sport - Times Online

Anil Dash: Zidane World Cup Headbutt Animation Festival

Why Fifa could deny Italy the title (translated)

Zinedine Zidane game

zidane.swf

Established EBay Sellers Get Higher Prices For Good Reputations

"EBay sellers with established reputations can expect about 8 percent more revenue than new sellers marketing the same goods, a new University of Michigan study shows."
ScienceDaily

Quad Hifi and PC Speakers For Sale

I'm selling them on eBay, see here.

b3ta

* ANIM - Beastenders
* QUESTION - Lies you've told on your CV
* VIDEO - When Elephant Seals wake
b3ta

ihateronaldo.com

Cristiano Ronaldo
The pre-match goading, the pressure on the referee, the wink and the "shhhh" amount to one thing: cheating.
ihateronaldo.com
Link thanks to Tristán.

A Right to Expect More

The following would all make the top 50 players in the world:
Defence
John Terry

Midfield
Joe Cole
David Beckham
Steven Gerrard
Frank Lampard

Forwards
Wayne Rooney
Michael Owen

World Cup 2006

Most gutsy and determined team: England
Most tedious team: any third-rate team with a foreign coach and men behind the ball
Worst at penalties: England
Hardest to watch: England
Best player: Wayne Rooney
Worst temperament: Wayne Rooney
Biggest cheat: Cristiano Ronaldo
Worst manager: Sven-Goran Eriksson
Most fans: England
Best fans: England
Best firm: England