Quick hit with some links

[feuervogel]

Some NYT wanker "dares" discuss science and gender. Dr. Isis explains why this topic bores her to tears (and pokes giant holes in Tierney's "argument" in the process.) Via Zuska, who also links to Boing Boing with more links on the subject.

A dad writes about his four-year-old son playing GTA. It's kind of cute, actually.

People are asking the wrong questions in talking about the societal effects of the porn industry.

Heading back to the US tomorrow, should be home around 10 pm. I think DFS is picking us up; that's the plan as I heard it, anyway. Time to start organizing my suitcase and trying to shove everything inside.

Comments

[tiurin.livejournal.com]

From Isis: "Can we all agree that Tierny pulled this completely out of his ass? Someone who scores in the top 99.9% of an aptitude test is more likely to get tenure than someone who scores in the top 99.1% in the seventh grade? Really?"

Actually, Tierney isn't necessarily wrong here- he's almost certainly right and Isis wrong on this one. JHU, like Duke, has decades of 7th grade data and there's strong evidence that the top 99.99%ile is significantly more likely to earn a doctorate and get tenure than the top 99.5%ile(I forget which journal the paper was in, but it can probably be found online by searching for "CTY" or "SET" or "Study of Exceptional Talent"). It seems probable that the same applies to 99.9% vs. 99.1%, though the differences would be less stark.

The more interesting studies are, of course, the ones which compare male and female students in countries where gender norms are less rigid.

[warpig1979.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm gonna pick you up last I checked. I just had a minor panic attack when I looked at the clock and it said it was the 13th, but then I realized it was only 1AM on the 13th so far.

German scientists on dropping the bomb

[beth_leonard]

Totally unrelated to your post, but here's a link I thought you might enjoy:

http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p11a.htm

The US captured a bunch of German physicists and put them all together in a bugged house during the war. The transcripts weren't declassified until the mid 1990's. The link above is them reacting to the news that the US dropped the bomb on Japan.

I thought you might enjoy it for your research. There's links at the bottom of that page I linked to, to more information.

--Beth