Month: August 2012

In response to a new CDC report (pdf), Tracy Clark-Flory investigates:

A University of California, San Francisco, study put the per-contact risk of transmission through "receptive" fellatio with an HIV positive partner at 0.04 percent. (For perspective, consider that the same study found a much higher per-contact risk of 0.82 percent for unprotected receptive anal sex.) The researchers calculated the rate of HIV transmission to be 4 out of 10,000 acts of fellatio. Without ejaculation in the mouth, though, some experts have called HIV transmission via performing fellatio "extremely low risk."

The risk of other STDs is higher. Amanda Marcotte chimes in:

Unfortunately, in a sex-negative culture, there's a tendency to believe that the only acceptable risk level for sex is "none." And so information like the new CDC report can be used to scare people, especially teenagers, away from any kind of sexual play. But by rolling all sexual activity into one big ball of Do Not, we could be leading teenagers who would have been happy to experiment with lower risk behaviors like oral to go straight to vaginal intercourse. After all, if it's all the same anyway, why not?

Scott Adams recently bought a car. He describes the process in detail:

The finance guy goes into his sales pitch about how we need some sort of invisible coating of magic protection for the exterior of the car. Without that protection a midsized bird can shit right through the hood and halfway through the engine block. We also need some invisible chemicals to protect the interior of the car because otherwise we are just wasting our money. Oh, and we need a more comprehensive warranty to cover all of the many, many things that will be breaking on this car. Apparently we had negotiated a terrific price on a car that was highly vulnerable to the elements. I kept craning my neck to see if it had dissolved into the parking lot behind me.

Mercifully, the Republican who took all his clothes off for a swim on an AIPAC indoctrination tour  is not really being grilled by the feds for what is surely an elemental human right. He's got some alleged shenanigans going on in Cyprus. Damn. I was working up some high dudgeon … defending naked Republicans! … and it turned out he was just a sleaze who needed a cool-down.

Update from a reader:

You’re still getting the story wrong.  Kevin Yoder (R-KS), the purported skinny-dipper, is not the subject of the investigation at all; it’s Mike Grimm (R-NY), who to my knowledge is not alleged to have publicly disrobed in Israel or any other place.  It’s still enough of an embarrassment that Eric Cantor had to call several of these members onto the carpet when the news first came to light (for getting nekkid in public, not for being shady).

I may be wrong, but this doesn't read to me like a presage to a withdrawal:

The language he uses is directed at evangelicals. A contrite sinner who asks forgiveness is a profound trope in Christianity and this appeal could work, it seems to me. Note the opening shot of him and his wife, his reference to his daughters, and the phrase "in my heart," one that W used constantly to get away with virtually any calamity. And in Missouri, the polls haven't shifted much since the revelation of Akin's truly medieval views of women. Polarization is so sharp that a Republican, even a man with Islamist views on women, can break even with a female opponent. And Romney's blunt call for him to pull out is not endorsed by the Christianist base. In some ways, it's a harbinger of what would be happening throughout a Romney presidency: a struggle between the Republican leadership and the fundamentalist fanatics they need to win the presidency.

Sarah Kendzior takes the Western media to task for their coverage of Pussy Riot, saying the band has too often been sexualized and trivialized:

The three members of Pussy Riot are "girls," despite the fact that all of them are in their 20s and two are mothers. They are "punkettes," diminutive variations on a 1990s indie-rock prototype that has little resemblance to Pussy Riot's own trajectory as independent artists and activists. "Why is Vladimir Putin afraid of three little girls?" asked a Huffington Post blogger who is not prominent but whose narrative frame, a question intended as a compliment, is an extreme but not atypical example of the West's reaction to and misunderstanding of Pussy Riot.

As far as Pussy Riot's problems go, being characterized as "girls" by the press ranks pretty low. So does the lack of vegan food in Russian prisons [PDF] (the object of a clueless campaign by fellow 1990s throwback Alicia Silverstone). Both are trivial compared to the two years of hard time they face. But Pussy Riot tells us a lot about how we see non-Western political dissent in the new media age, and could suggest a habit of mischaracterizing their grave mission in terms that feel more familiar but ultimately sell the dissidents short: youthful rebellion, rock and roll, damsels in distress.

Update from a reader:

Wait, a band with "Pussy" in its name is being sexualized? Oh, they must mean violent unrest on the part of cats. WTF?

Alain de Botton and his London-based School of Life staff want you to give it a shot:

Their “bibliotherapy” program matches individuals struggling in any aspect of their lives with a list of books hand-selected to help them through tough times. You get your reading list after an initial consultation with a bibliotherapist in which you discuss your life, your reading history, and your problems.

No, results have not been tested to work. But:

Inflexible thinking is characteristic of both anxiety and depression, the two most common psychological complaints. In their non-clinical forms, these ailments are self-perpetuating because the sufferer is locked into thought-patterns that reinforce them. While unproven, literature’s rumored power to reorient and rewire these patterns is certainly worthy of future study.

James Surowiecki wants US immigration policy to shift away from prioritizing family members and instead emphasize attracting and retaining skilled workers from abroad, particularly those from India and China: 

In 1990, the number of employment-based permanent visas was capped at a hundred and forty thousand a year. Astonishingly, that number hasn’t changed since, even though the U.S. economy is now sixty-six per cent bigger, and, with the rise of India and China, the supply of global talent has grown sharply. We also cap the visa allocation for each country, regardless of size, at seven per cent of the total number of visas, so only a fraction of the applications from China and India get approved.

From AFP/Getty:

This picture taken on August 16 shows Chinese beachgoers wearing body suits and protective head masks, dubbed 'face-kinis' by Chinese netizens, on a crowded public beach in Qingdao. The face masks were initially designed to protect from sunburn – as many people in China dislike getting a tan, especially on the face – but it turns out they are also quite handy at repelling insects and jellyfish.

Bill Chappell has more:

In many cultures, a tan doesn't imply health and leisure, as it often does in Western advertising. Instead, it's seen as a connection to outdoor work, and the peasantry. Preserving one's pale skin, the thinking goes, implies that you lead a pampered, successful life.

Of course, there's another way to accomplish that goal, and still beat the heat: visit an indoor pool. And that's what Chinese folks do by the tens of thousands. But even that has created a stir. Photos of a few of China's gargantuan pools and water parks made news earlier this month — in part for the mass of humanity that seems to fill every foot of available space, and in part because web surfers were scandalized by what they called unsanitary conditions.

Getty's photos are too good not to share another:

A reader writes:

Art De Vany describes the Pareto Principle as "the most unusual events will have the greatest impact." That is actually backwards. The Pareto Principle is really: the events with the greatest impact will tend to be the most unusual. The subtle difference is the direction of causality. The way De Vany states this, it sounds like all unusual events have a large impact – which, of course, is ridiculous.

The Pareto Principle is essentially a version of a power law.  Think: earthquakes, or forest fires, or wealth distribution, etc. The largest earthquakes are the most rare, and small ones happen all the time. Similarly, the population of the very rich is not just smaller than other levels of wealth; it is exponentially smaller.

Another writes:

What utter bollocks.

First off, that's not the Pareto principle ("… states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes." – wiki). Second off, you can't just take a rule from one domain (economics) and apply it to another unrelated one (exercise). Let's apply Einstein's relativity to child rearing or set theory to mixing drinks while we're at it.

Thirdly, you cease getting fitness improvements due to lack of progressivity in your workout, not because you don't have "unusual" elements in your workout (and if you're doing max effort every single workout, then max effort is no longer "unusual", is it?). Lyle Mcdonald has an excellent series of articles explaining the different training zones and the bodies' physical adaptations. With some number fudging, maybe it's more like 40% of the work can get get you 80% of the effects, the real Pareto principle can be stretched to accommodate exercise, but not the "unusual" version put forth by De Vany.

Oh, and fourthly on the subject of De Vany's book and his claim that we're virtually unchanged since our ancient ancestors, look at the book The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution. We have accumulated many genetic differences that are advantageous to living in densely populated, agricultural based societies.

Sarah Rich is entranced by a new design from Airbus:

The concept plane, which they hope resembles the real Airbus models of 2050, takes biomimicry as a guiding principle for the design of forms and materials. The most noticeable aspect of this approach is in the fuselage, which, instead of being wrapped in opaque steel, is composed of a web-like network of structural material that looks a bit like a skeleton. In fact, that’s exactly what it should remind you of, because it’s inspired by the bone structure of birds.