Stemple and her colleagues also found another interesting number that contradicted national stereotypes:

Sexual assault among prison inmates is three times more likely between female inmates than male inmates.

http://all-that-is-interesting.com/american-men-rape-victims

Amy, just wanted to let you know I sent you an email yesterday. Thanks. :-)

Althouse:

You need to go read the first paragraph at Slate to see how horribly Prescod-Weinstein summarizes what James Damore wrote. Scientists are untrustworthy, she argues and, simultaneously, demonstrates.

https://althouse.blogspot.com/2017/08/it-is-impossible-to-consider-this-field.html

What difference fathers? Plenty. City Journal takes a New Yorker article on single parenthood to task.

EXCERPTS:

"...a 2010 study coauthored by Brown University president Christina Paxson found that only 5 percent of families in which the mother lives with the biological father of her children (even if not married to him) have any contact with protective services by the child’s fifth birthday. The rates for other types of family structure are two to three times higher."

AND

"...most upper-middle-class kids nowadays owe their success not to after-school activities, tutoring, or cultural enrichment, but to the parents who raised them, who disproportionately tend to be married. The most important single factor in children’s well-being is growing up in a stable home with married parents."

Elsewhere, someone suggested that the kids were just pulling a prank on the teacher - but it's just as likely they weren't, IMO.

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2017/07/28/537907951/the-ongoing-battle-between-science-teachers-and-fake-news

Last paragraphs:

...This poses a particular challenge to people like Susan Yoon, who are training the next generation of science teachers. She's a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education.

She tells her students — like Nick Gurol, whose middle-schoolers believe the Earth is flat — that, as hard as they try, science teachers aren't likely to change a student's misconceptions just by correcting them.

Gurol says his students got the idea of a flat planet from basketball star Kyrie Irving, who said as much on a podcast.

"And immediately I start to panic. How have I failed these kids so badly they think the Earth is flat just because a basketball player says it?" He says he tried reasoning with the students and showed them a video. Nothing worked.

"They think that I'm part of this larger conspiracy of being a round-Earther. That's definitely hard for me because it feels like science isn't real to them."

For cases like this, Yoon suggests teachers give students the tools to think like a scientist. Teach them to gather evidence, check sources, deduce, hypothesize and synthesize results. Hopefully, then, they will come to the truth on their own.

On the same subject:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/07/28/kyrie-irvings-flat-earth-beliefs-now-the-bane-of-middle-school-teachers/?utm_term=.311c58d771dc

Someone pointed this out to me the other day.

Macron, president of France - no children
Merkel, chancellor of Germany - no children
May, prime minister of the UK - no children
Gentiloni, prime minister of Italy - no children
Rutte from Holland, Lofven of Sweden, Bettel of Luxembourg, Sturgeon of Scotland - no kids.
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission also has no kids.

The people responsible for charting the future of Europe has no stake in that future?

> The people responsible for charting the future of
> Europe has no stake in that future?

Raising kids, even as a father, does impact one's career. I don't think it's surprising at all that many successful people, particularly people who have reached the top, are not parents.

If childfree politicians were incapable of being truly sympathetic to the needs of parents and helpful to them, we'd have proof of that by now. Or, at the least, parents would stop voting for them.

From comic Steve Hofstetter:

"Heckler doesn't stand a chance"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekoDt_uxb_E

It's 3:26 minutes long. Bottom line: You don't have to be an insider to have common sense.

Or, as the childfree Bill Maher once wrote (not verbatim - I think it was in his most recent book): "I may not have goldfish, but I know enough not to fill their bowl with Mountain Dew."

Trump - has kids
Obama - has kids
Bush - has kids
Clinton - kid
HW Bush - kid who became president (among others). You decide if that was a good thing ;>
Reagan - kids

How far back do I need to go.

"I may not have goldfish, but I know enough not to fill their bowl with Mountain Dew."

Ok, so you understand poisoning kids is a bad idea. That really isn't saying much.

Oh, and I think there are only three reasons to call yourself childLESS as opposed to childFREE:

1. You have a fertility problem and you don't want to adopt even a healthy baby. Many would say this doesn't really count - at the least, it doesn't count as an excuse to be miserable. Get over it and get a life.

2. You're too poor. This includes the inability to move away from a bad neighborhood where you wouldn't want to marry anyone - and you don't believe in single parenthood. Fair enough.

3. You're too unpopular. Both in the dating scene AND with the foster care agencies.

Moar Twitter drama. ACLU lawyer doesn't like it that the ACLU is defending Milo Yiannopoulos

https://mobile.twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/895351745693585419

Ben, Bill Maher wasn't referring to poisoning kids. Can't find it right now, but I can later. He was simply criticizing parents who lack common sense in general.

And please watch the video of Steve - it will give you a better idea of what was meant.

Ben, Bill Maher wasn't referring to poisoning kids. Can't find it right now, but I can later. He was simply criticizing parents who lack common sense in general.

Not my quote, but (paraphrasing): "I may not own a helicopter, but when I see one dangling from a tree, I know somebody fucked up."

☑ Conan the Grammarian at August 10, 2017 10:07 AM

Part 1
See Sixclaws comment here: Sixclaws at August 8, 2017 8:45 AM.

Part 2
Note that —for now, at least— the first linked article in the Google search results for "American Inventors" (in English) is the Steve Sailer consideration of Google's, um, 'contextual' indexing.

Maybe it's ironic, or maybe the world's going to Hell.

More regarding the "inventors" thing:

It's like Google is begging black people to become inventive and even innovative, so they'll be easier to hire.

This isn't entirely evil.

In olden days, animal physiology prevented most of the world's creatures from making sense of a television screen. The scanning cathode ray didn't draw an image that was recognizable, because the frequency was too high. (Or: The human eye was slow enough to see the image.)

LCD's changed everything.

I bet it was another one of those peaceful complaints:

Didik Muadi, a Muslim who organized the protests against the statue, said Muslims would destroy the figure themselves if the government did not intervene.

“Actually, we can allow them to build the statue, just not as high as it was and it should be in the temple, not outside,” Mr. Didik told the news site Tempo. “We are tolerant.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/world/asia/indonesia-chinese-statue-islam-muslims-protest-guan-yu.html

I can agree with that Kevin. But I also claim that just because you know a helicopter shouldn't be hanging from a tree doesn't mean you know how to fly a helicopter. Often you can tell someone screwed up but not be able to tell what they should have done to prevent the screwup. Even more tragic sometimes when the screwup happened there are no good solutions to fix it.

I just found the child having/child not having trend between the US and Europe interesting. The low fertility rate is a European cultural thing. So even without inviting in millions of third worlders who want to destroy their culture they were doomed anyways. To a large extent they just weren't interested in having another generation to keep things going.

Crid, interesting posts. Thanks.

DANG!

http://www.timesnews.net/Law-Enforcement/2017/08/05/KPD-Woman-clocked-at-115-mph-with-kids-in-car

Sometimes it happens:

http://i.imgur.com/NJHtQxm.png

In olden days, animal physiology prevented most of the world's creatures from making sense of a television screen. The scanning cathode ray didn't draw an image that was recognizable, because the frequency was too high. (Or: The human eye was slow enough to see the image.)

LCD's changed everything.

Crid at August 10, 2017 4:27 PM

My cat chases tennis balls on the Plasma. She is particularly fond of Serena Williams.

mpetrie: some smart lawyer might beat that unless her car was going both downhill and with the wind.

From Motor Trend: “Though it may accommodate big and tall passengers, and its much interior volume is sizable, the Versa is undeniably slow in a straight line,” we said in our 2012 Nissan Versa First Drive. “It takes at least 9 seconds with its throttle to the floor – and its CVT droning and wailing at its 6500 rpm redline — to get the little sedan up to highway speeds. For best results, keep the Versa in an urban, slow-speed habitat.”

Sixclaws: Sailer has been working the inventors thing for some time. His timeline has a lot of angles on it.

Ben, no one's talking about automatically blaming the parent when a kid behaves badly. Kids have free will, after all.

However, things ARE likely getting worse when it comes to common sense. When so many parents don't have it, it's too easy to forget what IS common sense.

From Bill Maher's "The NEW New Rules," page 249 (this piece is from March of 2010):

...New Rule: Let's not fire the teachers when students don't learn. Let's fire the parents. Now, last week, President Obama defended the firing of every single teacher in a struggling high school in a poor Rhode Island neighborhood, and the kids were outraged. They said, "Why blame our teachers?" and "Who's President Obama?"

You know, I think it was Whitney Houston who said, "I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way." And that's the last sound piece of educational advice this country has gotten. From a crack-head in the 1980s.

Now, I know what you're saying: "But, Bill, what do you know about raising kids? You don't have any." Yeah, I also don't have any fish, but I know not to fill their tank with Mountain Dew. Or to enter a kid in a beauty pageant, or let him be an altar boy.

What you do with your spawn affects me. They're the ones who run me over while they're texting. Because they're using an online dictionary to spell "where u at?"...

And, from 2005 (page 82 of his older book):

...A recent reality show called “Super Nanny” placed an old-school, discipline-wielding nanny into a family where the mother can’t figure out the reason she’s having a nervous breakdown is that she says things to her kids like, “Tyler, mommy would really appreciate it if you didn’t throw rocks at me.” You know, moms and dads these days are like the Democratic Party: lame, spineless and not holding up their end of the equation. And kids are like the Republicans: drunk with power and out of control!

Maybe that’s why there’s also a new phenomenon called “parent coaching,” a kind of tech-support service for clueless parents when their 3.0-year-old goes haywire. As described in a recent New York Times article, here are some of the questions a typical mom asks her parenting coach: What should she do when Skylar won’t do his chores? Should there be limits on how he spends his allowance? Should Forrest get dessert if he does not eat a healthy dinner?

Now, for those of you who are saying, “But, Bill, you’re not a parent,” I say, “True. But I have one thing these parents apparently don’t: a brain!” This is not rocket science. What you should do when Skylar won’t do his chores. How about using your size advantage. Make him...

...So, no, I don’t have kids. And you know what? I don’t intend to have any until people start making some I’d want my kids to play with. Until then, I’m just glad I own a lot of stock in Ritalin.

(end of Maher's rant)

And while having fewer kids clearly has to be done carefully so the economy can be reshaped without destroying it (ie, even dropping to from 7.5 to 7 billion in a decade or two might be risky), I'd think it would be obvious that any economic problems we have will NOT be solved by leaping to 10 billion by 2040 or so.

Incredibly, the U.N. and others are only NOW changing - again and again - their predictions as to how soon that will happen. Not long ago, they were saying we'd only be at 9 billion by 2050. Any child who can do arithmetic and who has a population timeline would know better. Hint: We were at 3 billion in 1960 and 6 billion in 1999.

I'm also very glad that even Trump (or any future president) MAY have the sense not to talk the same way that T.R. did back in 1906:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29547

A bit more than half way down:

"When home ties are loosened; when men and women cease to regard a worthy family life, with all its duties fully performed, and all its responsibilities lived up to, as the life best worth living; then evil days for the commonwealth are at hand. There are regions in our land, and classes of our population, where the birth rate has sunk below the death rate. Surely it should need no demonstration to show that wilful sterility is, from the standpoint of the nation, from the standpoint of the human race, the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement; a sin which is the more dreadful exactly in proportion as the men and women guilty thereof are in other respects, in character, and bodily and mental powers, those whom for the sake of the state it would be well to see the fathers and mothers of many healthy children, well brought up in homes made happy by their presence. No man, no woman, can shirk the primary duties of life, whether for love of ease and pleasure, or for any other cause, and retain his or her self-respect."

I mean, don't we have enough unwanted foster children already?! Having unwanted kids very often does not make the parents "happy." Nor is it a "duty."

Just to clarify - there are two possible scenarios, if you thought my math was off. Either we double the population every 45 years, which is what's been happening ever since 1930, and so we'll have 10 B by 2032. Or we increase by 1 B every 12 years, which is what's happened ever since 1987, and we reach 10 B in 2047.

Or something in between. Either way, it won't be wise - or clean. (Will there by ANY clear spots in the Pacific by then?)

"Ben, no one's talking about automatically blaming the parent when a kid behaves badly. Kids have free will, after all."

Are you sure? Have you read anything Kevin has written?

"However, things ARE likely getting worse when it comes to common sense. When so many parents don't have it, it's too easy to forget what IS common sense."

We have no cultural uniformity. Without a common culture we have no common sense of how things should be. Instead things get reduced to the basest lowest common denominator. So don't stab children with knives is generally (but not universally) accepted. But drugging kids into a coma and strapping them into a straight jacket is also accepted.

We actually had a dentist kill a kid here in town like that a few years ago. It is standard practice for medicaid patients across the US.

"or let him be an altar boy."

Yet the vast majority of altar boys (and girls) have no harm. Should all men be arrested because some men are pedophiles? That is the logic on display here.

And no, I fail to see the issue with current population growth. Especially with the countries I named.

Germany - 1.2%
France - 0.4%
Italy - -0.2%

You comment about clear spots in the pacific is pure gibberish. I know this is your hobby horse and all but lines like that reveal how unhinged from reality you are when topics like this come up.

Ben, Maher is a comedian. Don't play dumb.

And there's a Texas-sized patch of garbage in the Pacific. I'm sure you knew that too.

Yes, I got that. But I reject what lies under the joke. I disagreed with the part you first put forward and I disagreed with the expanded version. Or were you only trying to make a joke an not a point?

As for the pacific, that has zero to do with global population size. The two are completely unrelated. You may as well complain about increased population growth on earth messing up the eye of Jupiter. 1B or 10B or even 100B that garbage patch isn't going to change in size. Changes in manufacturing process, changes in materials used, and changes in garbage disposal practices will all have an effect. As would going out there and picking up the garbage. Even changes in local geography to move ocean currents would impact things. But the number of people on the globe is unrelated.

And there's a Texas-sized patch of garbage in the Pacific. I'm sure you knew that too. -lenona

Why then are there never any photos?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

Aside from the fact that Wikipedia is not a scientific source that's considered acceptable to use in schools, did you even READ the article, assuming it's true?

"...The patch is not easily visible, because it consists of tiny pieces almost invisible to the naked eye. Most of its contents are suspended beneath the surface of the ocean..."

So, that's likely why there aren't satellite photos at Wikipedia. It would be better to call it a plastic soup, maybe. In the meantime, there's no denying that fish are eating the plastic and we're eating the fish.

"Ben, no one's talking about automatically blaming the parent when a kid behaves badly. Kids have free will, after all."
_____________________________________

Are you sure? Have you read anything Kevin has written?
____________________________________

Plenty, thanks. I'll be very surprised if you can point out any post of Kevin's where he said that children or teens with responsible parents NEVER cheat, steal, or do anything else illegal out of desperation for attention or popularity. (From "The Tempest": "Good wombs have borne bad sons.") I simply take him with a grain of salt when needed, just as I do Maher or the people at Bratfree. All three have exhibited plenty of sympathy for children who are victims of violence, after all. (Also, I suspect the Bratfree members don't use profanity nearly that much in real life - if they talked that way on the radio or in person, I wouldn't listen to them for a minute.)

That said, I DO think it's common sense to say that when kids or teens treat other people badly Again and Again, it's usually because the parents are lazy, cowardly, in denial or just don't care. (Just not always.) Small children cannot be unsupervised or trusted not to vandalize other people's property, and kids over ten, if they can't discipline themselves and can't be trusted when alone, either need to be in therapy or in supervised programs, like sports. (I also have no sympathy for the authorities when parents beg for psychiatric help for their kids and they can't get any - and the kids end up committing terrible crimes as a result.)
_____________________________________

"or let him be an altar boy."
_____________________________________

Yet the vast majority of altar boys (and girls) have no harm. Should all men be arrested because some men are pedophiles? That is the logic on display here.
_______________________________________

It was not. It was an exaggeration, as you know. Maher was raised Catholic and knows perfectly well that most priests are not criminals. He's now an atheist, so you can't expect him to make any jokes in SUPPORT of any religion. What made you think he was calling for a police state rather than simply demanding that parents stop being lazy and expecting teachers to do all the disciplining? (I doubt you really thought that.)
________________________________________

And no, I fail to see the issue with current population growth. Especially with the countries I named.

Germany - 1.2%
France - 0.4%
Italy - -0.2%
_____________________________________

Fine, so THEY don't need to go any lower as nations, per se. Doesn't change the fact that even one teen birth, in ANY country, is too many, since it's extra dangerous for both mother and baby. Not to mention any unwanted children. Bottom line: When fewer people have unwanted children, that's a Good Thing and no one should be complaining about it. If immigration and harsher rules and supervision for immigrants are the only way to prevent economic collapse, terrorism, AND unwanted births, so be it. (Don't start on adoption - with fertility clinics, there will never be as many adoptive couples as there used to be, and hardly anyone criticizes couples for that.)

Besides, people who WANT children but are not about to work 60 hours a week just so their kids can live in a safe neighborhood and go to a good school should be helped economically, not scolded. Good example: Italy. Why doesn't the land that loves big families HAVE them any more? Because they can't afford them! End of story.

If immigration and harsher rules and supervision for immigrants are the only way to prevent economic collapse, terrorism, AND unwanted births, so be it.
______________________________________________

Error, of course. I should have said "AND to make up for the drop in unwanted births."