September 29, 2005
Aging Workforce
Forbes recently pointed out that the aging workforce will not only create a labor shortage, but a new type of worker that is highly skilled but wants an employment structure that allows for a balance of work and leisure in retirement. If this turns out to be true, we might expect to see some successful high-talent "mature worker" temp firms hit the market.
Posted by Lonne at 11:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (3)
September 14, 2005
How to use smart talk (jury studies)
In a prior post, I discussed the fact that people are percieved to be smarter if they critique rather than propose. Now MarketingEye informs us that jury studies show that people are also more persuaded by technical jargon than by plain speaking or tone. This further explains the expansive use of jargon in the more worthless (and leftist) parts of academia.
So if you see someone being vocally critical, asking hard questions, using a lot of jargon, and perhaps throwing temper tantrums, reciprocate. Otherwise, being constructive, plainspoken, and calm/excited is probably much more productive.
Posted by Alex at 05:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)
September 11, 2005
Polygamy: who suffers?
A thought: Who is it that suffers the most from Polygamy? No, not women. No, not men. But... ugly men. If you were a beautiful woman, would you rather be Harrison Ford's second wife or the first wife of an ugly loser?
Posted by Morgan at 01:24 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (1)
September 10, 2005
Things Girls Know But Guys Don't #1
Alternative to ironing: hanging a shirt right near a steaming shower
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September 09, 2005
Why women like cats (and why Euros are weird)?
From the Guardian:
There are fewer experiments in humans, but results from studies of students and conscript soldiers in the Czech Republic in the mid-1990s highlighted the fact that infected people showed different personality traits to non-infected people - and that the differences depended on sex. Infected men were more likely to be aggressive, jealous and suspicious, while women became more outgoing and showed signs of higher intelligence.
From TimesOnline:
He found the women infected with toxoplasma spent more money on clothes and were consistently rated as more attractive. “We found they were more easy-going, more warm-hearted, had more friends and cared more about how they looked,” he said. “However, they were also less trustworthy and had more relationships with men.”By contrast, the infected men appeared to suffer from the “alley cat” effect: becoming less well groomed undesirable loners who were more willing to fight. They were more likely to be suspicious and jealous. “They tended to dislike following rules,” Flegr said.
Ann Althouse comments:
So a disease carried by cats makes you act like a cat? That seems awfully bizarre, yet it's hard to shake off the significance of a brain-altering parasite that half of us have -- and 80-90% of French and Germans have!
Posted by Alex at 05:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
Jews vs Neanderathals?
From a discussion on Slashdot about the coexistence of modern Humans and Neanderathals followed by the laters extinction:
One theory is that when neanderthals mated with modern humans the offspring would survive if the father was a modern human and mother was a neanderthal because the neanderthal woman's birth canal was wider. However, if a neanderthal man mated with a modern human the mother and child could die in labor due to the fact that the birth canal was too narrow for the hybrid child. There has been speculation on differing gestation periods as well.The reason this results in extinction of one of the races is due to the fact that when there is consistent gender bias in inter-racial mating, if there is any degree of polygyny or serial monogamy (de facto polygyny) then the gene flow tends to be from the race whose males are successfully mating to the population whose males are not as successfully mating. If there is any substantial inter-racial mating under such circumstances it could easily be that a millenium or so is all it would take to destroy the existence of the race whose males are experiencing lower fertility.
In other words, coexisting homo-sapiens crowded out neanderathal males from mating possibilities. Judaism operates through matrilineal decent, but somehow survives... What are Jews doing differently? Extracting the best of the non-Jewish genes and making them Jewish?
Posted by Alex at 04:51 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Evacuees Better Off Living in Stadium
Regardless of whether it is true, this seems like one of those comments it is just better not to make publicly.
Posted by Lonne at 02:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Flood Insurance
Government subsidized disaster insurance incents people to live in places with a higher risk of disaster than they would choose if they did not have access to such subsidized insurance (e.g. New Orleans).
Posted by Lonne at 02:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
From Before Katrina
An anecdotal alarming anecdotal antidiluvean (alliterative) augery.
Posted by Lonne at 01:34 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
A History of the Wife
From Marilyn Yalom's book of the same name.
Still true?
When I think about ancient Judaism and early Christianity, I am struck by certain basic differences in their conceptions of marriage--differences that have persisted in some form to this very day. Judaism taught that marriage was connected to the mitzvah of procreation--a divine commandment and a blessing. Because marriage was seen as the only sanctioned way Jews could fulfill their obligation to reproduce, men and women were literally obliged to marry. Numerous rabbinical sayings found in the Torah and the Talmud reaffirm this sentiment... Christianity, on the other hand, took an early deviation from this position. Following the models of Jesus and Saint Paul, early Christianity valued celibacy above marriage. In the words of Saint Paul, "The unmarried man cares for the Lord's business; his aim is to please the Lord. But the married manc ares for worldly things; his aim is to please his wife; and he has a divided mind... THe married woman cares for worldly things, her aim is to please her husband" (I Corinthians 7:32-34). Acquiring a wife of husband was seen as interfering with the more primary business of forming a union with the Lord. If, for the Jew, the only way to obey God's commandment was to marry and produce offspring, for the Pauline Christian, the best way to fulfill God's commandment was to abstain fro sex altogether. [p 13 - 14]
Obvious contemporary parallels not even worth saying [But do I "love" those far-off beautiful celebrities then?]:
It has been argued that the French "invented" romantic love in the twelfth century. Its model was the perfect knight and the inaccessible lady, usually the wife of a king. Romantic love existed primarily outisde marriage in an atmosphere of secrecy, which intensified the experience, as in the myth of Tristan and Iseut, the legendary Celtic couple... [p. 65]
Oh, Maryland!
The state of Maryland promoted itself as a paradise for female servants in search of a husband: "That Women that go over into this Province as Servants have the best luck here as in any place of the world besides; for they are no sooner on the shoar but they are courted into a Copulative matrimony..." [p. 141]
Like Winston Churchill said...
The Puritan minister John Cotton, "teacher" of the First CHurch of Boston from 1633 to his death in 1652, expressed what was probably a commonly accepted view: "Womena re Creatures without which there is no comfortable Living for man: it is true of them what is wont to be said of governments, That bad ones are better than none." Such a backhand compliment reflected a considerable change from the medieval religious stance that no wife was better than a good one. [p. 144-145]
It's all about demography:
During the nineteenth century, the birth rate of all American white children declined by almost 50 percent--statistically speaking, from 7.04 children per married mother in 1800 to 3.56 children in 1900. This msut have been due to conscious efforst, such as sexual abstinence, male withdrawal, abortion, and contraceptive devices. Historians disagree over the extent to which antebellum Southern women practiced any of those methods, some arguing that couples from the planter class did not try to limit fertility, and others that they did. One factor that may have added to the greater fertitility of Southern women was their use of slaves to nurse their babies: since many white mothers were not nursing, they could not have profited from the "natural" contraception that breast-feeding afford by delaying the return of menstruation after childbirth. Slave women, on the other hand, began the century with a slightly lower birth rate--an average of six babies per mother, and did not experience a comparable decline in the number of offspring during the next hundred years. This was due to a variety of interconnecting factors, including their earlier age of sexual activity and the expctation on the part of their masters that they would breed new slaves. [p. 213]
The the Nordic countries have been promoting the ancestors of gay marriage for over a century!
The law of 1874 [in Sweden] also permitted wives to possess their own earnings. This provision had special meaning for working-class owmen, many of whom were self-supporting in their premarital years. These women often delayed marriage until they had acquired a dowry on their own and were able to pay for a wedding--a costly ceremony that always devolved upon the bride or her family. During this "engagement" period, which could go on for years, Swedigh working-class women often cohabited with their men, and even became mothers--practices that were unthinkable for middle- and upper-class women. Premarital cohabitation, practiced by an estimated 40 to 50 percent of all working-class couples, gave rise to the expression "Stockholm marriage" for individuals living together without the blessings of church or state. [p. 265]
I wonder if this is related etymologically to the phrase, "going Dutch"?
Posted by Morgan at 01:52 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (6)
September 08, 2005
I'm now reading and recommending to any guy who understands the acronym PUA
The Game by Neil Strauss
Posted by Morgan at 01:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 07, 2005
In Defense of Elitism
Quoted from the book of the same name by William A. Henry III.
Gradually and reluctantly, however, I realized that the wrath directed at elitism has less to do with money than with populist, egalitarian scorn for the very kinds of intellectual distinction-making I hold most dear: respect and even deference toward leadership and position; esteem for accomplishment, especially when achieved through long labor and rigorous education; reverence for heritage, particularly in history, philosophy, and culture; commitment to rationalism and scientific investigation; upholding of objective standards; most important, the willingness to assert unyieldingly that one idea, contribution or attainment is better than another. [p. 2]
No comment on this one:
Anyone who has ever spent a week involved in personnel matters knows that there is hardly an employee alive who sees his sidetracking as resulting from his own weakness. [p. 15]
Also note that the book--published in 1994 (I found the copy I read 11 years ago in my bedroom in my parents' house!)--quotes Mickey Kaus (p. 23). Mickey Kaus! He existed before the blogosphere did?
Posted by Morgan at 01:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 06, 2005
On Aggression
From Konrad Lorenz's book of that name:
In a series of experiments with blond ring doves Craig removed the female from the male in a succession of gradually increasing periods. After one such period of deprivation, he experimented to see which objects were now sufficient to elicit the courtship dance of the male. A few days after the disappearance of the female of his own species, the male was ready to court a whtei dove which he had previously ignored. A few days later he was bowing and cooing to a stuffed pigeon, later still to a rolled-up cloth, and finally, after weeks of solitary confinement, he directed the courtship toward the empty corner of his box cage where the convergence of the straight sides offered at least an optical fixation point. Physiologically speaking, these observations mean that after a longer passivity of an instinctive behavior pattern, in this case courtship, the threshold value of its eliciting stimuli sinks. THis is a widely spread and regular occurance; Goethe expresses analogous laws in the words of Mephisto, "Du siehst mit diesem Trank im Leibe bald Helena in jedem Weibe" [Having imbibed this potion, you will soon see Helena in every female] and--if you are a ring dove--you do so even in an old duster of in the empty corner of your cage. [p. 52]
Interesting, too:
Far-fetched though this explanation of a widespread phenomenon may seem, strong arguments speak for its correctness. As far as I know, there is not a single gregarious animal species whose individuals do not press together when alarmed, that is, whenever there is a suspicion that a predator is close at hand. The smallest and most defenseless animals do this the most noticeable, and in many fish species only the small, young ones do it, while adults do not. When in dagner, some species of fish crowd together to form a body so that they look like one big fish, and, since many of the large, rather stupid predators such as the Barracuda meticulously avoid large prey for fear of choking, these tactics may be a special protection. [p. 143]
Herds and individuals:
The purely quantitative and, in a sense, democratic action of this process called "social induction" by socialists means that a school of fish is the less resolute the more individuals it contains and the stronger the her instinct is [p. 145]... In general, typical herd animals lack any aggressive instinct and with it any individual distance. [p. 147]
Aggression and love:
Intra-specific aggression is millions of years older than personal friendship and love. During long epochs of the earth's history, there have been animals that were certainly extraordinarily fierce and aggressive. Nearly all reptiles of the present day are aggressive and it is unlikely that those of antiquity were less so. But the personal bond is known only in certain teleost fishes, birds, and mammals, that is in groups that did not appear before the Tertiary period. Thus intra-specific aggression can certainly exist without its counterpart, love, but conversely there is no love without aggression. [p. 217]
Posted by Morgan at 01:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 05, 2005
Loafers, now and then
150 years later, Substitute "Republican" for "Whig"; and "Hipster" for "B'hoy" and "G'hal," and Nothing has changed
Quote taken from the fascinating Walt Whitman's America by David Reynolds:
In terms of the party arrangement of the day, the Whigs were usually associated with the capitalist success ethic and the democrats with loaferism. It was this distinction that George Templeton Strong had in mind when in an 1838 diary entry he said a Democratic meeting "looked like a convention of loafers from all quarters of the world" and when elsewhere he noted that while the Whigs attracted respectable types Democrats tended "to take in all the loaferism of the nation." So distinct a class did the loafers become that by 1856 the New York Times could note, "New York may be classified into Uppertendom, Loaferdom, and Shantydom," with the Bowery the center of Loaferdom. Urban versions of loaferism, especially street loungers known as the b'hoy and the g'hal, would attract Whitman when he became a city journalist. For the time being, his experience as a working-class Democrat set adrift in the unsteady world of country teaching made him contemplate loaferism as a viable alternative to a social system that had in many ways beaten him down, as it had many others. "I have sometimes amused myself with picturing out a nation of loafers," he wrote in a November 1840 essay, "only think of it! an entire loafer kingdom!" Adam, he says whimsically, was a loafer, and so were all the philosophers. The political underpinnings of his conception of loaferism were undeniable:Give us the facilities of loafing, and you are welcome to all the benefits of your tariff system, your manufacturing privileges, and your cotton trade. For my part, I had serious thoughts of getting up a regular ticket for President and Congress and Governor and so on, for the loafer community in general.
(p 62-63)
And, funnily enough, he was a racist, too.
"We call upon every mechanic [that is, workingman] of the north, east, and west," [Whiteman] continued--inserting a long list of workers including the carpenter, mason, stonecutter, blacksmith, shipbuilder, shoemaker, paver, and others--"to speak in a voice whose great reverberations shall tell to all quarters that the workingmen of the free United States, and their business, are not willing to be put on the level of negro slaves."
(p. 124)
Posted by Morgan at 01:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (1)
September 04, 2005
In Honor of Labor Day
A few lessons from Eric Hobsbawn's Uncommon People (from which we also learn that shoemakers have a tradition of being radical leftists!).
First, on the origin of May Day:
...few have shown much interest in this occassion [May Day], not even in those socialist parties which are the lineal descendants of those which, at the inaugural congresses of what became the Second International, in 1889 called for a simultaneous international workers' demonstration in favour of a law to limit the working day to eight horus to be held on 1 May 1890.
Then, this:
Those who, before the European Community, went furthest in co-opting May Day were on the extreme right, not the left. Hitler's government was the first after the USSR to make the First of May into an official National Day of Labour. Marshal Petain's Vichy government declared the First of May a Festival of Labour and Concord and is said to have been inspired to do so by the Phalangist May Day of Franco's Spain, where the Marshal had been an admiring ambassador.
I learn the opposite lesson from this: even more evidence that the National Socialists were, well, socialists.
Posted by Morgan at 05:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
