- Oprah tells swimmer Diana Nyad that atheists don’t believe in “awe” and “wonder” – Because that’s what god is made of, awe and wonder! The redefinition of god is one of the most irritating tactics used against atheists, I feel. From Amy.
- 8 inventions by women that dudes got credit for – From Jamie.
- How playing with a “sexy” avatar affects female gamers – From Criticaldragon1177.
- Study finds TV shows with ethnically diverse casts, writers have higher ratings – From Heina.
Featured image by Alan Grinberg.
Well, isn’t that nice. Oprah redefines God so that she can believe that only people devoid of awe are atheists.
I don’t need Oprah to believe I am an atheist, I just wish she would do us all a favor and stop “believing” in Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Jenny McCarthy, Deepak Chopra, and the rest of her selp-helpless minions.
For the sexy-avatar thing. While it was ambiguously stated in the article, the paper is more clear:
“Participants were randomly assigned to one of four Conditions ..”
So we’re not looking at the avatars women have chosen for themselves (which would bring causality into question) but *choosing for them* what avatars they will have.
That makes this extra bad. It means that we can take a woman or girl who has been raised with modern feminist beliefs, throw her into a video game (and similar things) and have her come out, eventually, maybe years down the line, as a rape apologist. Yuck. Makes everything you here all the more important to reinforce. This is pretty solid evidence that all of those billboards, TV ads, video games and everything else are just as unhealthy as feminists have been saying for decades.
I wonder about the causality of the diverse cast/writers -> higher ratings relationship. I mean, from the study it seems that they’re definitely related, and I certainly buy that people are more likely to watch shows that more accurately reflect their own experiences in a diverse world, but I wonder if there’s more in addition to that. Like, perhaps shows where they put more effort into creating a diverse environment, both onscreen and off, are more likely to have a higher attention to detail in general. Maybe writers and producers who purposefully create a diverse cast of characters are more likely to take greater care with those characters and their plots than those who don’t, leading to a higher-quality show on the whole. Of course, that presupposes that higher-quality shows tend to have higher ratings, which I suppose is not necessarily true. And of course, how would one objectively measure how good a show is?