Women are sexist too. Even avowed feminists are found to be unconsciously biased against women when they take 'implicit association' tests. Mary Ann Sieghart asks where these discriminatory attitudes come from and what we can do about them. Evidence for women's own sexist biases abounds. In one example, female science professors rated the application materials of ostensibly male applicants for a lab position considerably higher than the identical documentation of ostensibly female candidates, in an experiment with fictitious applicants where only the names were changed. The reasons for the pervasive bias seem to lie in the unconscious, and in how concepts, memories and associations are formed and reinforced from early childhood. We learn from our environment.. The more we are exposed to sexist attitudes, the more we become hardwired to be sexist - without realising it. So what to do? Does unconscious bias training help? Or could it make our implicit biases worse? A good start might be to tell little girls not that they look so pretty in that dress, but to ask them what games they like to play, or what they are reading. And so teach them they are valued not for how they look, but for what they do.
2 February 2018
Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell: Why Alien Life Would be our Doom - The Great Filter
Finding alien life on a distant planet would be amazing news - or would it? If we are not the only intelligent life in the universe, this probably means our days are numbered and doom is certain.
The Atlantic: America Wins the Gulf Crisis
In those eight months, Qatar relied on exactly the kind of diplomacy its neighbors loathe: It drew closer to Iran and Turkey, deepened its economic and defense relations with Russia, and embarked on a robust campaign of public diplomacy with the Trump administration. The U.S. had sent mixed signals about whom it supported in the Gulf crisis. Even as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis urged all sides to work out their differences, President Trump tweeted that Qatar was supporting terrorism. [...]
“I don’t think this administration really had the intention of using chaotic nature of their response as an opportunity to push Doha to do more things,” he said. “It’s more symptomatic of the fact that the complete interagency incongruence has created an environment where Doha has had to take more proactive steps to address the various competing elements of how various actors in the U.S. government view Qatar.” [...]
Ultimately, though, while Qatar’s relations with the U.S. are improving, there are few public signs its dispute with its neighbors is close to being resolved. Abu Dhabi and the Saudis had hoped to cause Qatar the kind of economic pain and diplomatic isolation that would force it to make concessions. That didn’t happen—and those countries don’t appear to have a Plan B. One way out of it, Henderson said, is if Trump convened a GCC summit and put pressure on all sides. “A deal could be reached.”
WonderWhy: Macedonia Naming Controversy
In this video I attempted to explain the incredibly complex and surprisingly controversial topic of the naming dispute between Greece, and the country that wished to call itself the "Republic of Macedonia", claiming that the name implies territorial ambitions upon its region, also called Macedonia.
I look at the ancient kingdom of Macedonia, where the name comes from and briefly look at the history of the Balkans and how we arrived at this situation, which became an issue in 1991 when the country declared its independence. More than a quarter of a century later and this dispute remains unsolved.
Bloomberg: Richer Poles Are Bad News for Denmark Facing Labor Shortages
Despite a progressive tightening of immigration rules by the center-right government of Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, foreign workers have continued to trickle in and now account for nearly a tenth of the Scandinavian country's labor force, with eastern Europeans making up a sizable chunk of that, according to estimates by Nordea Bank AB, the region's largest lender. [...]
The arrival of about 80,000 foreign workers since 2013 helps explain why Danish inflation remains subdued despite half a decade of negative rates. According to Helge Pedersen, Nordea's chief economist in Denmark, annual wage growth could have been as much as 4.5 percent without them, compared with the actual rates of around 2 percent seen over the past five years.
Poles, Romanians, Bulgarians or Czechs have been able to look for jobs around the continent since joining the European Union, which guarantees the free movement of its workers. But years of EU membership – and the subsidies that come with it -- are now bringing the intended rewards to much of eastern Europe. Nordea notes that unemployment in Hungary or the Czech Republic is now at "post-communist lows," while salaries in Poland have doubled since the start of the millennium, says Eurostat, the EU's statistics agency. [...]
In November, the Confederation of Danish Industry said that nearly four out of 10 of its member companies were struggling to find qualified employees. This week, the Confederation of Danish Employers added its voice to calls for the government to attract foreign workers, citing estimates that suggest one in four firms in the construction industry are having to turn down orders because they can’t hire enough people. But the truth is that all kind of workers are needed across many sectors of Danish business.
Bloomberg: Gay-Marriage Clash Throws Costa Rica Presidential Race Wide Open
Costa Rica’s debt and deficit have risen to the highest on record, and its credit rating has been cut repeatedly in recent years. But, forget all that: It is the prospect of legalizing gay marriage that dominated the debate and threatens to turn the Feb. 4 presidential election on its head.
Many religious Costa Ricans were incensed by a Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling this month in favor of gay marriage, which the government said it would implement. Support for Fabricio Alvarado, an little-known evangelical candidate opposed to the notion, leaped sixfold, propelling him into first place in some polls and spooking investors.
Many investors had been looking to Antonio Alvarez, an opposition candidate who has called for a “fiscal rule” to limit the government’s ability to take on debt, and is proposing to extend the sales tax to goods that aren’t currently covered. He’s now likely to slug it out with Alvarado in a second round of voting on April 1.
Juan Diego Castro, a populist lawyer who is pledging a war on corruption, is in third position in the polls. Alvarado leads decided voters with 22 percent support to 21.4 percent for Alvarez in an Opol Consultores poll of 2,800 people conducted from January 25-27. Castro trailed with 15.7 percent.
The New York Times: The Famine Ended 60 Years Ago, but Dutch Genes Still Bear Scars
In September 1944, trains in the Netherlands ground to a halt. Dutch railway workers were hoping that a strike could stop the transport of Nazi troops, helping the advancing Allied forces.
But the Allied campaign failed, and the Nazis punished the Netherlands by blocking food supplies, plunging much of the country into famine. By the time the Netherlands was liberated in May 1945, more than 20,000 people had died of starvation.
The Dutch Hunger Winter has proved unique in unexpected ways. Because it started and ended so abruptly, it has served as an unplanned experiment in human health. Pregnant women, it turns out, were uniquely vulnerable, and the children they gave birth to have been influenced by famine throughout their lives. [...]
Dr. Heijmans, Dr. Lumey and their colleagues published a possible answer, or part of one, on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Their study suggests that the Dutch Hunger Winter silenced certain genes in unborn children — and that they’ve stayed quiet ever since. [...]
If scientists can solve the Dutch Hunger Winter’s lingering mysteries, they might also get some clues to how other kinds of stress can reprogram children’s health even before they’re born.
Quartz: Scientists found a new way to slow Alzheimer’s progress
Deep brain stimulation works by continuously tickling neurons in the frontal lobe of the brain with electrodes. Over the course of two years, three patients who had these electrodes implanted maintained more of their mental faculties than a group of control patients, who started out at similar stages of the disease. One woman in the test group even started making meals for herself—an ability she had lost in 2013.
Deep brain stimulation has been used to treat hundreds of thousands of patients with Parkinson’s, another kind of neurodegenerative disease. Researchers have also tried using it to treat Alzheimer’s, but only to mixed success. Most of these studies have targeted brain regions associated with memory and spatial awareness—usually some of the first to be destroyed by amyloid and tau. [...]
The work, which was published (paywall) Jan. 30 in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, isn’t promising to reverse Alzheimer’s-related brain damage, or stop it’s progression entirely. All three patients still worsened over the course of the study. But the level of independence they maintained—assessed through a Clinical Dementia Rating scale—was higher than those who did not receive this kind of stimulation. Notably, all of them chose to keep the stimulation going after the trial period ended because they liked its effects.
The Guardian: Zero tolerance? The facts don't support the pope's claims on child abuse
In January 2014, Archbishop Tomasi, the Holy See’s envoy to the United Nations, presented to the committee on the rights of the child a document showing that since 2004, more than 3,420 credible allegations of sexual abuse of minors had been referred to the CDF. As a result, 848 priests had been dismissed, and lesser disciplinary measures had been applied against the other 2,572. That’s 75% tolerance, not zero. [...]
Francis used specious arguments of the same kind in his formal response in September 2014 to the United Nations’ committee on the rights of the child when he claimed that the Holy See was only responsible under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child for the 31 children resident in the Vatican City, despite the fact that within those 44 hectares, the Holy See decides whether thousands of clerics from all over the world should continue as priests after the church had found them guilty of sexually abusing children.
Francis further claimed that attempting to implement the provisions of the convention in the territory of other states, such as by mandatory reporting to the civil authorities under canon law, could constitute a violation of the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states. While states have differing and sometimes no mandatory reporting laws for child sexual abuse, none of them prohibit such reporting. Mandatory reporting to the civil authorities under canon law would assist states in the enforcement of their criminal laws designed to protect children.
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