Month: October 2009

If you wondered what Christian Bale was thinking about:

Bonus hyper-cool Miles Fisher Talking Heads mashup with AP after the jump:

He's onto something here.

Angry at having their finances investigated, the anti-marriage equality group hits back at the state. I can't imagine that's a good story to have out there in the closing phase of an initiative campaign.

Elizabeth Pisani:

Finally, a major paper has bothered to deconstruct the mythical numbers that are bandied about to justify the UK government’s idiotic conflation of sex work with sex trafficking. The fact that raids on over 800 brothels didn’t net any traffickers doesn’t mean that there isn’t anyone in the UK selling sex against their will. But (I’ve said it before and in today’s Guardian I say it again) trying to wipe out the sex trade completely only makes things worse for the minority who are forced into it.

There is little one can do to change the minds of those who object, viscerally, to the commodification of sex. And the numbers will always be open to dispute, as they are with any illegal activity. But a lot of good researchers have spent a lot of time and effort trying to get a handle on trafficking in the sex trade — you can find excellent references here and here, and there’s a pretty good discussion thread over at Badscience. It’s like the massive, hidden HIV epidemic in the Middle East — if we haven’t found it after two decades of looking, maybe it really isn’t so massive after all.

Mickey explains: It's About Ailes, Stupid.

Rob Horning spies an article in the Walrus about the possible downsides:

[Neurological researcher Véronique Bohbot fears that overreliance on GPS, which demands a hyper-pure form of stimulus-response behaviour, will result in our using the spatial capabilities of the hippocampus less, and that it will in turn get smaller. Other studies have tied atrophy of the hippocampus to increased risk of dementia. “We can only draw an inference,” Bohbot acknowledges. “But there’s a logical conclusion that people could increase their risk of atrophy if they stop paying attention to where they are and where they go.”

No, he's not talking about the Republicans.

As Peggy Wang puts it, "Black people have their token white friends, too." Whose country is it again?

I love this paragraph:

It is unclear why the bear, which was wearing ice skates at the time, attacked Mr Potapov. The bear was later shot by police. Deadly attacks are rare in the country's circuses, which often train bears to wear skates and play ice hockey.

David Bernstein asks me to read the NGO Monitor report (pdf):

[H]ere’s the rub: NGO Monitor doesn’t claim to be an objective, neutral party on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Neither do I. But (a) that doesn’t mean that one can reasonably and blithely ignore facts presented by NGO Monitor (e.g., the radical anti-Israel activist backgrounds of various top HRW Middle East staff; that one of the “eyewitnesses” relied upon on the Goldstone report has given fifteen different and conflicting accounts of a particular incidents to different sources); and (b) Human Rights Watch does claim to be an objective source, yet its reporting is laughably one-side. So here’s my proposal to Andrew: read the report with an open mind. If its wrong, explain specifically why its wrong. And if its right, acknowledge that its right. Your support for Human Rights Watch should at least be informed, no? Better to live in blissful but ideologically comfortable, ignorance?

Since this thread started by my looking into HRW's actual record of reports and failing to find the unhinged anti-Semitism and desire to exterminate Israel that has been reported, I don't think "blissful ignorance" is an adequate description of my stance. The Dish glanced over the report and it reads more like an op-ed than a fact finding exercise, but we will give it further study. E-mail if you find anything of interest.

Most excellent Youtube:

If you're wondering on earth this is about, see here.