- Pork board squeals over imaginary unicorn meat. Also, the original blog post from ThinkGeek on the issue. (From Brian.)
- Men who batter think other guys do, too.
- Scientology continues its efforts to avoid paying taxes.
- “No! It’s math!” (From Pete.)
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Heads-up: The Scientology article link made my Avast! antivirus freak out a bit. Probably one of the ads on the page or something, but still… shields up, mateys.
Good luck to Scientology. It’s as valid as any other made up religion. Like, all of them.
Nick Xenophon vs. Xenu? I smell a conspiracy.
Not surprised. I am surprised, though, by what the real numbers are reported to be. One out of eight men has thrown something at their partner with the intent of hurting them? One out of twelve has forced their partner to have sex against their will? I would have guessed much lower. My faith in humanity has waned a bit after reading that.
Well, I must say that the Unicorn Meat issue is common. The tunnel vision that people get when they get an idea and apply all of their talent to support it. Its not that they are stupid, its that they get tunnel vision on this one idea and as a result they miss the big picture entirely. And end up making asses of themselves to the world.
I think the book Blink had a great chapter on this type of error.
Of course if we eliminated these kinds of errors, life wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining. I wish I had been a fly on the wall when they were informed that they were requesting a cease and desist on a imaginary product.
@GreyDuck: My anti-virus found it too. It seems to be a real virus; an email worm, apparently (wtf?).
Jen: you should probably remove that link from this post, just to be safe.
re: “Men who batter think other guys do, too.” – I know domestic violence is a serious subject, so I don’t mean to make light of it, but when I first saw the link, I couldn’t figure out what the hell it meant. So my caffeine-deprived brain came up with “men who like to cook things by battering them and then deep frying them.” Imagine my surprise when I visited the article…
@DataJack: I’ve switched the link. But y’all need to get Macs. ;)
DataJack – I had the same thing. Men who batter…like cake? Cake batter? Huh?
I’m blaming the cold medicine.
@DataJack: Or label it “Mac Users Only” [/obligatory dig from smugness] ;)
Hmm, a potential subject for the next Skepchick quote quiz: Xenophon, Xenu, or Xena?
@DataJack: Admittedly, that was also my first reaction.
But…I’m wearing a red shirt!
Yeah… I was doing math too…. that’s the ticket… brb.
@Andrés Diplotti:
If I had any faith left, get it?, it would be waning.
I know what a good legacy is for parents to leave their children, having offspring who know that it’s always bad, wrong and inexcusable to harm, intimidate or threaten another human being except in self defense. What is often lost in the whole domestic violence discussion is that the attitudes that lead to domestic violence typically start in childhood or adolescence. I’d really like to see some anti domestic violence education being made part of the general sex-education curriculum.
@ no it’s math!
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2Cje3z/society6.com/r/p-7505340/r:t
an awesome example of said graph joke.
Doesn’t everybody wear red shirts, at least some of the time? I don’t get this…
Seriously, this jibes with my (not skeptically examined) theory of interpersonal violence. People who grow up seeing it in their daily lives are more likely to regard it as normal, and practice it themselves. On the positive side, good education on the subject will help them realize that it is not as normal and socially acceptable as they thought. and at least some of them will, at least some of the time, not do it. Since this is one fewer episode of random violence that someone impressionable (like a kid seeing his parents come to blows) might witness, that person would slightly lower his own internal estimate of the commonness and acceptability of hitting someone else, gradually lowering the overall incidence of violence. This is obviously a very slow process, but does tend in a good direction.
Despite minor incidents like WWII, I think that violence in society is much less prevalent than it was hundreds or thousands of years ago. Perhaps in a few thousand years, we’ll actually be civilized.
I pictured cake batter.
I want to know where the battering study gets its normal figures. By surveillance of a population not believed to be abusers? They could be very motivated to lie. By conviction rates? What about the population that batters but doesn’t get caught. These normal figures may be not so reliable either.
@infinitemonkey: My thoughts exactly. That was the worst analogy I’ve ever seen! It was like someone played a prank and found all the “engages in violence” and replaced with “wears a red shirt.”