Republican Senator Tom Coburn has issued a report on waste in government — a two hundred page report of excessive spending in the millions and as small as $300. As a former intern for Sen. William Proxmire (D., Wis.) who used to issue his Golden Fleece Award, I always find such reports interesting. However, one small item caught my eye: $30,000 to the University of Washington and Cornell University for a study that proved that “Gaydar” actually exists. Of course, you might ask why the government has an interest in such a study but do not be surprised if the next DoD budget has $30 billion in research and development of a stealth gay project for the evasion of Gaydar.
The National Science Foundation contributed $30,000 to fund a study done by the University of Washington and Cornell University to measure “Gaydar.” They found it to be 60 percent accurate. That is only 10 percent over a random 50-50 bet, it would seem. However, the result were considered significant. According to the Science Daily, the study found “After seeing faces for less than a blink of an eye, college students have accuracy greater than mere chance in judging others’ sexual orientation.” The authors argue that this may assist in establishing the basis for discrimination claims.
The study involved 129 college students who were given 96 photos each of young adult men and women. Notably, the selection of gay women showed a higher percentage of accuracy: 65 percent. Even when the faces were flipped upside down, participants were 61 percent accurate in telling the gay and straight women apart. That means, that we can still peg the sexual preference of “Silly Sally” even after she “Went to Town Walking Backwards Upside Down.”
For men, the accuracy rate was only 57 percent. So there you have it. I am just not sure what it is except that I am pretty sure we could have used the money better in adding more science books in one of our struggling public schools. This is particularly the case when the limitations of the study are considered. Even assuming that this is a valuable exercise for federal funding, the subjects were shown simply still pictures of individuals. These pictures were further made more uniform by removing facial hair and other characteristics. I am not sure how such a display offers a real measure. Of course, the researchers could note that the percentage of accuracy is all the more remarkable given the lack of such distinguishing characteristics or the use of moving images.
Here is one serious concern that I have. The study actually shows slightly over random selection for males and a bit better for women. However, while I see the marginal value for a discrimination lawsuit (though I am skeptical of its admissibility in a given case), it also will likely reinforce the belief of many (including many homophobes) that they can tell someone is gay. Such suspicions are often wrong and based on stereotypes. From secondary school to employment environments, people are often subject to such rumors or harassment. I take from this study that there is actually a high level of inaccuracy in such assumptions.
I do not object to the universities pursuing such research. This is a major social and political segment of our population and the perception of the sexual orientation of individuals has, as the authors note, significance in a variety of different contexts. However, there is a legitimate question of whether public funds are justified.
Source: Townhall
Ideallist I am sorry for what you have gone through and glad to see you back
Mike S, Idealist, check out the work of a defrocked cardiologist named Irv Dardik, in New Jersey. Glad to see you back, Idealist — I missed you! 🙂
Again, id707, you make the mistake of thinking your approval of my methodology is relevant. It isn’t. Sometimes I use a screwdriver. Sometimes I use atomic weapons. Either way, I don’t mind getting dirty and unlike some, dirt doesn’t disfigure me. I have really think skin. Dirt just washes right off. This is the freedom of not allowing the opinion of others to freely dictate one’s sense of self worth. There are very few people in this world who’s opinion of me matters to me. These people are family and friends, not simply acquaintances or strangers. To allow the casual acquaintance or stranger’s opinions to drive you is little more than being a slave to the satisfaction of others. I am many things, but I am no one’s slave.
PS beddy bye. thanks for a nice first day home from the hospital with oxygen enough for the brain too.
MikeS,
Thanks for the kind words. You have been an inspiration from the beginning. And will continue to be. You are correct in my not entrusting my heart to them. From the first roommate who died because they ignored his complaints on his admission afternoon, to the denial of my AV block problems, I have found it necessary to do so.
And to GeneH.
Thanks for the wise words. They apply to us all. Changing a mindset and doing the heavy lifting as MikeS once wrote is not a task all wish to attempt.
You do not need to throw shit to get the attention of idiots. The backsplatter disfigures you.
Don’t act like a shit disturber and I won’t call you one, id707.
“I respect much of what you write, but have other views regarding your argumentation and domination tactics. [. . . ] Speak civily and I will reply likewise.”
That you don’t like my argumentation tactics is irrelevant. You yourself stated that you have benefited from them and this in the end is all that matters. My tactics, just like the content of my free speech, are mine to choose and not for your approval. As for civility there is nothing more civil than seeking “the truth by which no man was ever injured.” Conversely there is nothing less civil that to let one who “is injured who abides in his error and ignorance” continue to do so without challenge. Once you advance beyond simple rote learning, all education contains the component of challenge at some point and to varying degrees. If challenge disturbs you, then consequently so will learning. How the individual deals with this distress is up to them. Frank Birch once said, “The price of wisdom is eternal thought.” Thought is work. It may not always be comfortable. It may not always be fun. But it has benefits as accumulated thought integrates into knowledge and knowledge converts into wisdom when added to experience. As the Bible notes in Job, “The price of wisdom is above rubies.” The value of wisdom is above rubies as well. And like a ruby, it takes a lot of work and discomfort to turn a raw stone into a jewel.
To be a raw stone is no challenge.
To be a jewel is a never ending challenge.
“Still acting like a shitdisturber…..
Typical GeneH.
You don’t need that sort of skit to win here.
The last was aptly put. I find myself different but there are parts I respect and others which need correcting. As I said before, I respect much of what you write, but have other views regarding your argumentation and domination tactics.
As for myself, I am always open to listening to others, if they have something to offer. My hypersensitivity has been abraded here and is not a trouble to me anymore. I can ignore what I wish, as can all here.
Some prefer to pal with topdogs. I prefer to be my own instead. Neither rationale nor self-pacification. Speak civily and I will reply likewise.
id707,
Still acting like a shit disturber I see. I’ll say it again for your benefit in case you missed it:
If you want to have your ideas placidly and quietly confirmed or your confirmation bias assuaged or a dainty lil’ round table where no one ever gives or takes offense, perhaps this isn’t the right place for you. Free speech is messy and contentious. You are free to have any opinion you like and to express it, but you are not free to be exempt from having your opinions challenged. If that troubles you, I suggest you add freedom of speech to that list of concepts you don’t understand.
Largely I ignore you, id707, mostly because I find you a mildly daft fool, and your opinion of me is just as irrelevant to me as Enoch’s. However, if you’ve benefited from the ass kickings you’ve taken here from me and other? You mistake that I am indifferent to this fact. I am, in point, pleased. What I’m indifferent to is if and when you don’t learn. A lesson can only be taught to someone, it can never learned for them.
Enoch W.,
Thanks for the NPD idea. Fits better that others I’ve entertained. I thought he was just an political argumenter: ie avoid the points scored by his opponent and attack on a formal basis, which is his own home ground.
My comments are limited to GeneH, as the other material is long over my head, although I can follow the discussion.
I have seen GeneH under a year only bested once by someone.
Where in the end it was the other man’s capability to throw skit better than GeneH, which forced GeneH from the scene, only to return the next day, offering totally five a55-kissings over several hours of time to the previous day’s winner.
For some reason, the winner did finally recognize him and they together took several victory parades before the two days were over.
Unfortunately the winner disappeared a few days later never to reappear. Content as it were with a new victory acquired.
GeneH, simply put in my words, is a compulsive person, obsessed with being top dog here. Most know him for what he is, his special “skills”, and his touchiness over challenges.
I speak of and when I will, and he has beaten my ass several times. But I am OK with him generally as he also has a Dr Jekyll side which is attractive and useful. He and others here in their kicking my a55 have also done me a world of good. But as to GeneH himself, my benefiting is irrelevant. And of no matter for the moment also.
Just thought you would like to know when you withdraw for the reason that arguing with GeneH is totally a useless proposition.
If he kicks me now is as usual, and irrelevant.
I am not declaring a judgement as a judge would. Only informing as a friendly gesture to a stranger.
Your redneck declaration DID bring out his prejudices.
He is a voracious feeder. A finger offered gives an arm lost.
PS Someone here once said: “When the bikers in the bar brawl, the rest go drink their tea in the salon.”
Not an apt description I believe. It is rather a case of don’t say a word for GeneH might misunderstand and give you a whipping later.
It is a bully gang, but it is nice stuff that gets discussed. Dog packs are dog packs. And what kind of SOB I am is for you to decide.
Good luck with the operation.
Just got myself out from the heart ward at top hospital in Stockholm. Had to do the diagnosis myself, but four doctors conceded that I was right. Thank goodness my pacemaker was smarter than they were and I saw what the pacemaker had done for me, which they had not seen.
They then converted my atrium flutter into normal action. Goody for them. Feel less brain hypoxia already day after, ie yesterday.
“Thank goodness my pacemaker was smarter than they were and I saw what the pacemaker had done for me, which they had not seen. They then converted my atrium flutter into normal action.”
ID707,
Been there, done that, as they say. I’m glad you’re feeling better because you were noticeably missed for awhile. What’s kept me alive through all my years of heart trouble is that I never fully trust the doctors enough to replace my judgment, with theirs. I see you think the same.
Enoch,
Saying I’m wrong isn’t the same thing as proving I’m wrong.
Terms of art have technical meaning and application. If you choose your sources poorly? If you don’t know enough about a subject to know you’ve chosen you sources poorly? If you don’t know enough to know that your choice in layman’s terms may be linguistically adequate but technically insufficient? That is your problem.
You failed to prove that I’m wrong. More than one person here has changed my mind in the past. “If any man is able to convince me and show me that I do not think or act right, I will gladly change; for I seek the truth by which no man was ever injured. But he is injured who abides in his error and ignorance.” That you can’t prove I should change my mind is your failing, not mine. And academic charity? That’s one of the biggest oxymorons I’ve ever heard. You’ve obviously had little to do with actual academia if you think such a thing even exists. Academics are as cut-throat and ruthless as any banker or lawyer, just in a different way.
I don’t care if you like me. I don’t care what you think I am. Your next to last post is pure ad hominem drivel much like the one before it.
As to your last post? Yes, this is a debate. We debate here all the time. You have no more chance of limiting the form than you did of limiting the scope of topic. But if your ass is sore after getting it handed to you on a plate? Let that be a lesson that you shouldn’t have brought a knife to a gun fight. If you want to have your ideas placidly and quietly confirmed or your confirmation bias assuaged or a dainty lil’ round table where no one ever gives or takes offense, perhaps this isn’t the right place for you. Free speech is messy and contentious. You are free to have any opinion you like and to express it, but you are not free to be exempt from having your opinions challenged. If that troubles you, I suggest you add freedom of speech to that list of concepts you don’t understand.
I made the comment above BEFORE reading the comments engendered by Enoch’s original comment.
Having read only a part of the following discussion, principally by GeneH, I hasten to draw my a55 out due to its unnecessary presence.
But my base contention remains. Preconceptions can not be corrected with less than an emotional/personality change.
Enoch W.
You are such a tempting target that I must violate (AGAIN!!!) a good principle. “Don’t get involved in others arguments.”
——————–
“enochwisner
1, October 17, 2012 at 11:15 am
Mike Spindell – You ask (in response to a reply I make, above), “Enoch, Ayn Rand much?””
———————-
The rest you write is fine as argumentation, but your understanding is zilch as to the fruits of our efforts.
It is not the wealthy who create jobs, it is not the wealthy who are unfairly taxed for their siphoning/leeching from the system they exploit.
Therein, succinctly, is your problem. Reasonig and intelligence in conventional measures does not produce correct answers when the wrong premises are the starting points, and when searching for preconceived answers, they will surely be found in overmeasure.
But you are deeply entrenched, and surely like some others here, unable to think otherwise. Often this is due to mistaking opinions for yourself. In your case, I am not interested in why you are an “ad hominem—pick one yourself”!
No answer is expected nor requested, but avail yourself of the air if you wish. You don’t even understand yourself.
With all best wishes, as always with the handicapped.
Try again.
Big, bigger, biggest lies need combatting.
OS did his bit, and now I am spreading the truth, told by a very rich man. Cross-posting.
===================================
idealist707
1, October 20, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Just so that you don’t have to change threads. here’s the letter to some friends about Hanauer speech at TED.
And thanks to OS for it all.
——————————
Here is a super-rich man who speaks at a conference, and declares that corporations DO NOT CREATE jobs, the middle class do—-by their demand for products.
Pass this on to those with brains enough to listen and use the information. It is not difficult to understand, so let’em try it. It is their economy and politics it will effect.
First a quote, and then the presentation at a conference.
————————
Otteray Scribe
1, October 20, 2012 at 12:23 pm
“Via Business Insider: “As the war over income inequality wages on, super-rich Seattle entrepreneur Nick Hanauer has been raising the hackles of his fellow 1-percenters, espousing the contrarian argument that rich people don’t actually create jobs. The position is controversial — so much so that TED is refusing to post a talk that Hanauer gave on the subject. National Journal reports today that TED officials decided not to put Hanauer’s March 1, 2012 speech up online after deeming his remarks “too politically controversial” for the site…”.
———————————
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g&feature=player_embedded
========================================
SPREAD THE WORD.
Bron,
Look to see if Gene ever stopped dancing around semantics, and addressed any of the issues I raised…or tried to. He didn’t. We argued the meaning of informal argumentation, of the ad hominem, of privity, of contract v. compact, etc., etc., etc. – and regarding every on-line or print authority I cited (objective sources) regarding all of these, Gene was right, and I was wrong. Not the sources, mind you – I was wrong. I was wrong that Oxford’s definition of privity is what it is. I was wrong that on-line legal dictionaries defined compact as they do. I was wrong that every reference defined pragmatism, first, as I had clearly used it (even the fact that there is a school of philosophy found under the name, “pragmatism,” doesn’t mean that doing only that which is pragmatic is a philosophy, just as being an epicure doesn’t mean one is an Epicurean).
That isn’t a debate, Bron. It isn’t a discussion. It’s a refusal to debate. A refusal to discuss – by every evasive and false means possible.
Gene,
Your protestations speak for themselves.
Each of your posts have been displays of factual error and/or some combination of logical fallacy, of relevance, ambiguity or of irrelevant thesis, bordering on the psychotic in their refusal to concede reality. There is a record, Gene, and no further need for my to continuing to argue what that record plainly says.
Though I make no claim to be an attorney, I do know this about litigation: it is not the litigants or their counsel who proclaim winners and losers, but the judge or jury. You have your cheerleaders – Mike first among them – and I have had mine – Bron. The rest, Gene, have dropped this thread long since because it had become a circle-jerk long since – and I take full responsibility for not having recognized you as the narcissist you are long since, and dropped this thread with them. Were I Lord Devlin, himself, writing under a pseudonym, I could make no headway with you because you are emotionally unequipped to accept that you might ever be wrong.
I’ve made my mistakes, Gene, in my view, chief among them being my failure to notice that you DID write, “compact,” rather than “contract,” when describing the relationship of individual to society. That mistake might have had substantive consequences had it not got mired in the question of whether the parties to either or both can, by accepted definition of the word, be termed in privity. They can: just because Murray on Contracts may be right doesn’t mean that Oxford and the rest must be wrong.
I offered you an olive branch some posts back; and, rather than accept an attempt to recast the discussion and its tone, you chose to use it as a whip. One more display of narcissism. And I, fool that I am, still didn’t cut bait and leave you to your conceits even then. I account this to the fact that these exchanges have been a welcome diversion to a preoperative process I am undergoing that is both physically and emotionally trying. Still, this is not an excuse for folly, and I should have sought diversion elsewhere.
I took your bait in your very first post, Gene, and that was my fault, too. When you had nothing more to answer my comment with than an open assault on a stranger, I should have known then that every word thereafter would be a word wasted. I kept hoping that you might actually want to discuss the questions I had raised. That question is premised on the observation that what passes for the principles on which we have organized our society fail in almost every case when applied to some plausible or logical condition, which invites the question if these are valid principles in the first place. It is a valid question, and not irrelevant to the field of law. But you have been determined to argue, Gene, not to discuss, to be right, not to learn – and, yes, you might have learned from such a discussion, as well from refinements to your own beliefs in the course of explaining them and advocating them as from things I might have written that you might not have considered. That is what I had hoped from a discussion with you for myself – but you cannot be taught, Gene, and there is nothing to learn from one who refuses to learn, himself.
As I wrote just a little bit above, it is useless to hope that litigants will decide among themselves who has made the better case. In our exchanges, it is more than useless, but it is impossible to hope that we can decide who has made the better case: we have not presented a case. We have argued everything BUT the case (and, yes, Gene, I AM so ignorant that I do not know the controls that give me italics – and I am supremely unconcerned with the fact: caps, with a reasonable reader, express my intent just as well), and there’s damned little chance that any exchange with you will ever be any different.
Since you like to prove me wrong, Gene, here’s your chance to prove me wrong that I will greet with genuine happiness: learn academic charity, let pass points you might disagree with that are not substantive, try to AGREE on a common vocabulary (rather waste time on semantic arguments that afford support to both sides) and let’s test the limits of underlying principles to see how far they hold good, if at all. In a word, show me that characterizing you as a narcissist IS wrong. Thus far, all you’ve succeeded in doing is add to the body of evidence that I am not.
Gene H:
not nice, just truth.
Why thank you, Bron. That was a very nice thing of you to say.