Sunday, December 15, 2019

200 Researchers, 5 Hypotheses, No Consistent Answers

As Will Rogers once observed “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”

THE MEGARICH ARE STILL DISHONEST, AND WATER IS STILL WET ..?
 
Kirstie Taylor, via Medium
Many people leave relationships and realise they weren’t actually in love. They simply mistook a different feeling for what they think love must feel like.

This simple treatment for diarrhea is one of the most important medical advances of the 20th century." The treatment is drinking glucose and sodium dissolved in water and it's saved millions of lives


Passengers evacuated from Qantas flight after a hydraulic issue at Sydney Airport

  CHANGE: Low sex drive in women is a medical diagnosis that’s finally starting to get the attention it deserves.


Among U.S. States, New York’s Suicide Rate Is The Lowest. How’s That?

What has New York done to lower its suicide rate?




The elderly in Japan are wearing exoskeletons to keep working past retirement age. "The father is in his 70s and was supposed to retire but is still working with our muscle suit."


Sometimes it doesn’t feel like cats are particularly domesticated, but as this PBS video explains, humans have actually domesticated cats two separate times, once in southwest Asia ~10,000 years ago and in Egypt ~3500 years ago. They were probably tamed by being around human settlements for the source of food. This is the commensal pathway to domestication, one of the three major pathways followed by most domesticated animals.









Letter From The Future: Stories In A Post-Print World



Courtesy Sarah of Becoming fame ... And Gayle of Three Williams
The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is a themed area based on the Harry Potter series built at Universal Parks & Resorts' Universal Studios Japan theme park in Osaka, Japan. As Sarah noted Not to be confused with Warner Bros. . .  

The largest single amount was paid to Chinese pop star Hins Cheung, who has been embroiled in controversy about Hong Kong protests
Tourism Australia splashes cash on social media stars, led by one linked to Hong Kong protests - Politics - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation


Reality TV builder Scott Cam's $300k government payday - ABC



Postreproductive killer whale grandmothers improve the survival of their grandoffspring [full text – no paywall]. Stuart Nattrass, Darren P. Croft, Samuel Ellis, Michael A. Cant, Michael N. Weiss, Brianna M. Wright, Eva Stredulinsky,Thomas Doniol-Valcroze, John K. B. Ford, Kenneth C. Balcomb, and Daniel W. Franks. PNAS first published December 9, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1903844116
“Why humans and some species of whales go through menopause remains an evolutionary puzzle. In humans, postreproductive females gain genetic benefits by helping family members—particularly increasing their number of surviving grandoffspring. The extent to which these grandmother benefits are important in the evolution of menopause in whales remains unclear. Here, we test the grandmother effect in resident killer whales, where females can live for decades after their last reproductive event. We show that grandmothers increase the survival of their grandoffspring, and these effects are greatest when grandmothers are no longer reproducing. These findings can help explain why killer whales have evolved the longest postreproductive life span of all nonhuman animals.”

















Nine Black Actresses Have Now Been Cast As Hermione In ‘Harry Potter And The Cursed Child’, But The Producers Refuse To Discuss Race



“The play’s producers, Sonia Friedman Productions, declined to comment for this article, noting that the subject of Hermione’s race had been discussed at length when the play opened in London. But that was eight Hermiones ago. When asked to discuss the cultural significance of the casting decision in the era when diversity and inclusion have become priorities in theater, the producers rebuffed The Times‘ attempts to speak with the show’s director, actors or anyone else in the production.” – Los Angeles Times

This Author Did Eight Years Of Research On A ‘Quiet Little Book’ That Became An Immediate Sensation


Lisa Taddeo thinks her success is partially luck, and partially that she really digs into the nuances of women’s desire, and their relationships with men, at least before the Weinstein scandal broke. – The Guardian (UK)


A Grudging Defense Of That Rather Expensive Banana Idea


Let’s go deep: “You are not a hopeless philistine if you find this all a bit foolish. Foolishness, and the deflating sensation that a culture that once encouraged sublime beauty now only permits dopey jokes, is Mr. Cattelan’s stock in trade. But perhaps you will find more to appreciate in Mr. Cattelan’s work if you take note of two points: one formal, one social.” – The New York Times

Prince Was A Meticulous Documenter And A Perfectionist. Is It Fair To Reveal His Incomplete Work?


Would Prince have agreed to the release of this material in this form? Does the potential public good, and the contribution to the historical record, outweigh whatever uncertainties Prince might have had about the revealing of his rough drafts? – The New York Times


DIGITISATION: De-identifying data is a complex but key issue for the future of government.


200 Researchers, 5 Hypotheses, No Consistent Answers Wired

BUREAUCRATS SPY ON PEOPLE BECAUSE IT MAKES THEM FEEL POWERFUL. ANY OTHER BENEFITS (USUALLY MINOR OR NONEXISTENT) ARE SIDE EFFECTS. Schools Spy on Kids to Prevent Shootings, But There’s No Evidence It Works.
The best and safest way to prevent school shootings? Replace schools with something that works. But that threatens too many rice bowls, where as turning schools into Orwellian prisons does not.


CAREERS: Scott Morrison says the whole-of-APS workforce strategy should support older Australians who want to join or stay in the workforce.
 

SCANDAL FREE, EXCEPT FOR THE TAN SUIT: Obama gave CommonCore contract to publisher, got $65 million book deal in return?

JOEL KOTKIN: The Middle Class Rebellion.
We usually associate rebellions with the rise of the desperate. But increasingly we are seeing large protests in comparatively wealthy countries that are led not by working class sans-culottes or starving peasants, but what was once the stable middle class.
Perhaps the best example today may be Hong Kong, where largely middle-class students and office workers are challenging the world’s most powerful autocracy, one that, by the way sees itself as the tribune of the “workers and peasants.” Although the protests are seen largely as based on issues of personal freedom and democracy, it also reflects a wider, deeper and more pervasive malaise in a city with a per capita income of $60,000, almost four times the national average and three time that of Beijing or Shanghai.
Whether in Europe, East Asia or the Americas, this new middle-class rebellion may be seen as what one Marxist publication called “a strike against the rising cost of living.”
Although the leftists identify this more with protests against things like subway fare hikes, in the latest uprising the key has been those things, notably energy and housing prices, which threaten to “proletarianize” the living standards of the not long ago decently comfortable.