Month: September 2010

The Sexism Of Ladies Night

by Chris Bodenner

Last week a judge in New York struck down a lawsuit alleging that club managers who lure women with discounted drinks are violating the equal protection clause – against men. Tracy Clark-Flory calls out her fellow feminists:

Roy Den Hollander, the man who brought the suit, is not the most sympathetic character — Jezebel's Irin Carmon referred to him as "Russian wife-abusing, Women's Studies' program-suing, young-lady-preying Roy" — but there is so much about ladies nights that runs counter to feminist philosophy. Gender-based pricing, really? If the roles were reversed, we would be in full-on protest mode.

Tracy's post reminds me of an item I read in the latest Time Out New York: 

Is it legal here to charge women substantially higher rates than men for haircuts? As a woman with very short hair, it really pisses me off when my male friends get cheaper cuts from the same stylist, even though my hair is shorter than theirs! Surely this is gender discrimination on a major scale?—Laura

A It’s time to find a new stylist, because posting rates that charge you more than your male friends violates the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) Code and NYC Human Rights Law. The DCA Code requires retailers (including hair salons) to post prices and forbids prices that differ on the basis of gender. NYC Human Rights Commissioner and Chair Patricia L. Gatling agrees: “Gender-based discrimination is a violation of the NYC Human Rights Law. Charging men and women different prices for the same service is gender discrimination,” she says. “Individuals who believe they are being treated differently from one another based on their gender, race, national origin and numerous other protected classes should contact the NYC Commission on Human Rights.” To do that, simply dial 311. —Sandra Plasse

I'm not especially animated by this double standard, but on the face of it, the disparate cost of drinks based on gender seems pretty damn discriminatory. What if a club owner wanted to attract more white patrons by offering them a special discount?

Plays Well With Others

by Zoe Pollock

A new study shows that for problem solving, two heads are usually better than one, unless any involved are incompetent and incapable of admitting it:

 If one person in the team has flawed information — or is less competent — then the outcome can be negative and perhaps you should completely ignore them…

Bahrami’s study tells us that what’s important for successful collaboration is the ability to estimate and report our own ability accurately. However, this is not always easy, especially for incompetent individuals. In psychology, there is a known cognitive fallacy called the Dunning-Kruger effect. The most incompetent individuals often overestimate their skills and think they are all above average, though that’s logically impossible. Having such a person in your team would severely damage performance. Simply put, if you are not sure about your competency in a team, the most productive thing to do is to tell your team members — though in reality, of course, this is not easy.

Strange Metaphors

by Conor Friedersdorf

Marvel at the opening paragraph in Tom Friedman's latest column:

In recent years, I have often said to European friends: So, you didn’t like a world of too much American power? See how you like a world of too little American power — because it is coming to a geopolitical theater near you. Yes, America has gone from being the supreme victor of World War II, with guns and butter for all, to one of two superpowers during the cold war, to the indispensable nation after winning the cold war, to “The Frugal Superpower” of today. Get used to it. That’s our new nickname. American pacifists need not worry any more about “wars of choice.” We’re not doing that again. We can’t afford to invade Grenada today.

I am not an expert in foreign affairs, let alone an esteemed columnist on that subject for America's newspaper of record. I'm just a guy trying to make sense of a metaphor that takes a whole world where the United States projects too little power, and fits it into a geopolitical theater "near" Europe. Does that mean North Africa? Or Western Asia? Does it mean the Middle East? Did your European friends look at you funny? Also, wasn't the Soviet Union a major power during World War II, and a significant victor in that conflict? After winning the Cold War, wasn't the United States suddenly a less indispensable nation than before? Amid two costly nation building programs, aren't we less frugal "today" than we were back then? Can't we in fact afford to invade Grenada?

The rest of the column is of similar quality.

Gratitude Gains

by Zoe Pollock

Saying "thank you" isn't just polite; it's better for business:

The simple act of having a boss come by and offer a public thanks to one group [of university fundraisers], but not the other, really packed a wallop…[W]hile there was no change in the average number of calls made by the group that was not offered thanks, the folks who heard a warm two-sentence thank you from a boss made an average of about 50% more calls during the subsequent week.

(Hat tip: Eric Barker)

Clouds In Your Coffee

by Zoe Pollock

Eileen Reynolds interviews Carolyn de la Peña, the author of "Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda:

How will a backlash against high-fructose corn syrup figure into the ongoing battle between different artificial sweeteners and table sugar?

It’s interesting that while sugar industry research was showing that artificial sweeteners were bad (and vice versa), and artificial-sweetener brands were suing one another over which one was more natural, and the government was publicizing the carcinogenic risks of vast amounts of sweetener ingestion, corn syrup silently entered most facets of the American food supply. Today, corn syrup adds back the calories that we remove through our zero-calorie sodas and “diet” desserts.

Now, of course, most of us know about the problem with corn syrup and its ubiquitous sweet calories. There’s enough of a backlash, in fact, that corn syrup has had to produce its own pro-industry advertisements. At the same time, recent polls show that most Americans consider artificial sweetener unhealthful. Local school districts are banning bake sales to try to cut down on sugar consumption. It’s tempting to say that we have finally reached a point where we cannot just vilify one sweetener or another, or wait for the next magic bullet to come. Maybe now that we seem to have no “safe” sweetener we will have to examine the larger problem—our fixation on sweetness in the American diet and an accompanying industry that has made soda cheaper than water.

But this is unlikely. “Artificial sweeteners” may become less “artificial,” but it’s not likely we will soon get rid of low-calorie foods and beverages. It is not possible to dispose of all the food we produce and market as a society without forms of “dietary credit” like artificial sweeteners. To produce and desire less of that food would take a major revolution in our food system.

About My Job: The Historian

by Conor Friedersdorf

A reader writes:

I am a historian, and I watch people get history wrong all the time. The thing I would emphasize most is that while people like to assert that in the old days it was like THIS, in fact human history is very diverse. There are almost no generalizations that apply to all human societies. Some people in the past were less materialistic than we are, but others just as much so. Some were less violent, some more violent. Some were relatively egalitarian, others divided into a handful of the obscenely rich and a mass of the poor. Some were tolerant and welcoming of outsiders, others savagely xenophobic and given to burning outcasts as witches. The real lesson of history is that we have found many, many different ways to live, and there is very little in the way of “tradition” we can point to to justify or attack our own ways.