Posts by David Hood
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
<q>Can’t comment on the actual neuroscience that may have been done, but that passage has major alarm bells ringing.<\q>
While the quoted numbers were the first thing to ring my alarm bells, I can comment on the neuroscience, if only to the extent that this study was conducted 4 years before (so four years more primitive in methodology) than the ignoble prize winning study of brain scanning a dead salmon (as a methodological commentary).
Wired write-up from when the study first appeared. -
This study is probably what QI were drawing from. I have some problems with the numbers as reported (6.5 times? So a woman's brain is at the most 14% grey matter (and the males nothing but)? The lack of units don't help either)
But the general take home is that whatever differences they were finding, they could not find anything major in the way of measurable differences in thinking outcomes. -
But I can 100% guarantee you that your neurophysiology – your brain – is different to Danielle’s, and that that has an influence on your responses to your environment. It’s a value-neutral fact.
However, because brains within a population range, we cannot speak about th specifics of those differences between two individuals - Danielle could have a more masculine brain than Ben, or a more Tibetian brain.
I am not (intending) to bring this up to be picky, but to show that there are several different modes of talking about things: personal - in my experience I have met both violent men and women and from what I saw the way and to whom they expressed that was different, and impersonal - the massive rise in violent crime among teenage girls in the past decade is more likely to be explained by the sociocultural factors influencing the expression of violence being much more gender neutral than they used to be than it is to be explained by some sudden cross generational change in human brain chemistry.
The thing is, when one is personally invested in the topic, by falling into one of the labelled groups, the impersonal becomes the personal. As you know from the experience of being a parent, it can be hard to differentiate between general statements that have some applicability in a specific case, general statements that are based on bollocks and should not be followed by anyone, and general statements that are not bollocks but not applicable to a particular case (let alone sub-divisions of those made up on the spot categories).
On top of that, there is alll the arguments around to what extent these differences are social constructions and to what extent differences should be accepted or rejected as a basis for change. I fall fairly far down the social construction opinion (but then my degrees are in Anthropology) but it is not something I will ever participate in a discussion why discussion (which is why I've largely kept out of this one) becuase I think in situations where the causitives are complex and cannot be proven with raising a generation in skinner boxes it is not productive compared to the questions "can we recognise that there is a problem here" and "what can actually be done about it"
I will also note that the blog that highlighted the awful gun ads, the good men project, have an implicit acceptance of masculinity as a thing that I have some issues with, however I do see them as try to address a real problem and doing at least some good. -
I was surprised to learn, the other day, that "Jingle Bells" was originally written as a Thanksgiving song.
The other bit of Christmas song trivia that I was reading recently (I think in a Gaurdian article) was that for making the video for Fairytale of New York, they hired the NYPD pipe band (as there was no NYPD choir) but being pipers not singers they did not know the words to Gallway Bay. In the video they are mouthing the words to the only song they all knew, the Mickey Mouse Club theme. -
Oystercatcher and chick (taken at extreme zoom). Victory Beach.
-
Looking back along Victory beach from the site of the flywheel
-
The flywheel from the S.S. Victory, the shipwreck Victory beach is named after.
-
I was out on Otago Peninsula today. View of middle Otago Harbour area.
-
Capture: The Castle, in reply to Jos,
Japanese ferns
Well the botanical name is Athyrium nipponicum and Japanese painted fern is an alternative name.
-
Here are some facts from The Atlantic Wire
The take home- over time Americans have been disarming, but those keen on guns have been more than making up the difference in sales.
