http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog Good Analysis, Bad Grammar Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:23:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Sigh, once again the political world seems to be in one of those situations again where we are supposed to pretend something isn't true because we would rather it weren't. Previously, we were supposed to pretend (despite Ferraro's express statement to the contrary) that Geraldine Ferraro's gender wasn't a ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/09/04/palin-politics-and-parenting/ As I've [said](http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/03/why-care-if-there-are-innate-gender-differences/) [before](http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/10/the-irrelevance-of-gender-differences-the-power-of-conditionalization/) the existence of any innate statistical difference between men and women in mathematical/scientific ability is of no real practical importance. As far as public policy goes we should be looking at what would be most effective in increasing the number of capable graduates in math ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/07/26/more-spin-on-science-gender/ So I often find myself trying to make the case that people are especially irrational when it comes to voting and other activities where the emotional content is large but individuals have little influence over the outcome or aren't very affected by it but I'm stymied by a lack of ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/07/14/suicide-barriers-positions-to-make-us-feel-good/ So a couple days ago there was a hysterical [story](http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/01/2331207) on slashdot saying we were [running out](http://slashdot.org/~tomhudson/journal/206171) of rare earth elements. Apparently this whole thing was started by Armin Reller, a materials chemist at the University of Augsburg, whose predictions of mineral extinction dates inspired an [article](http://www.asimovs.com/_issue_0806/ref.shtml) by Robert ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/07/04/the-economics-of-scarcity/ The capability of computers and our ability to program them seems to be increasing exponentially. Even if we hit a brick wall in terms of increased miniaturization and frequency our CS knowledge seems sure to continue building on itself. It stands to reason that within the next century ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/29/the-singularity-and-the-nature-of-intelligence/ So today on science Friday on NPR they had some kind of expert on smell on the program. According to him scientists have actually done studies that when women pass gas it has a stronger smell per volume of gas than male emissions. Apparently though men pass a ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/27/someone-did-this-study/ This morning the supreme court released it's [opinion](http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/07-2901.pdf) in Heller. Additional commentary from SCOTUSblog can be found [here](http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/heller-discussion-board-clarityis-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#more-7566), [here](http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/heller-quotes-from-the-majority/), and [here](http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/court-a-constitutional-right-to-a-gun/) and the [Volokh conspiracy](http://volokh.com/) has some good commentary as well but some technical issues on their end temporarily prevent me from linking directly to their posts on the ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/26/heller-and-handguns/ So Phillip Sands, the author of [torture team](Referer link: http://amazon.com/dp/0230603904/?tag=infiniteinjury-20), is being interviewed on NPR as we speak about the use of harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. Now I'm seriously bothered but many of the revelations about Guantanamo, particularly the possibility that we used harsh interrogation methods when we ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/20/war-crime-prosecution-for-the-bush-administration/ So today on slashdot I ran across a link to law professor Daniel Solove's [article](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565) grappling with the "nothing to hide" argument against privacy protections. He certainly has some thought provoking things to say and his [new book](http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/Understanding-Privacy/) will likely be interesting but I think he makes some fundamental ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/17/privacy-for-the-21st-century/ In case you hadn't heard [Judge Kozinski](http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/January-February-2004/feature_bazelon_janfeb04.msp) just decided to [recuse himself](http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-kozinski14-2008jun14,0,55401.story) from the [obscenity trial of Ira Issaacs](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/chris_ayres/article4100106.ece) because of the controversial pictures found in a (mistakenly) publicly accessible directory on his website. Reading the LA times article I linked above might give you the impression someone stumbled ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/16/kozinski-and-the-porn-problem/ I know I'm beating this issue to death so I will try to keep this post short but reading slashdot today I ran across this [awful article](http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/06/06/men-write-code-from-mars-women-write-more-helpful-code-from-venus/) from the Wall Street Journal Blogs saying women write better code than men. Now in and of itself the idea that *statistically* ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/16/faux-feminism-follies/ There are important questions about the appropriate role of government in encouraging healthy behavior. As a free society we should have deep reservations about forcibly taking people's money and using it to tell them how they should live, even when we are sure that would make for a better ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/13/should-we-encourage-long-lives/ So in a recent [post](http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/03/why-care-if-there-are-innate-gender-differences/) I argued that we really shouldn't care at all if there are innate gender differences because such differences would be irrelevant to our judgments about any individual's ability. In that post I simply took it for granted that the presence of innate gender differences ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/10/the-irrelevance-of-gender-differences-the-power-of-conditionalization/ In the post before last I [pointed out](http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080602-why-judy-cant-add-gender-inequality-and-the-math-gap.html) that despite the spin a recent study in science was actually better evidence for biological effects in mathematics ability than it was for the environmental hypothesis. In short showing that girls get better at both math and reading as gender equality ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/03/why-care-if-there-are-innate-gender-differences/ In a [recent post](http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/01/feminism-female-sympathy/) I talked about the sad state feminism in the public consciousness. In that post I merely sought to establish that much of what passes for 'feminism' these days isn't a serious attempt to restructure society in a more fair fashion but merely emotional feelings of ... http://www.infiniteinjury.org/blog/2008/06/02/do-we-want-gender-equity/