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From Peter Hitchens blog (edited)
Once again we hear the stupid phrase about the young ‘experimenting with drugs’. Look, the experiments have been done. That’s why they are illegal. All these substances can lead to misery, madness, crime and death. Those who treat the matter lightly should work in the mental hospitals where the young victims of the drug cult end up.
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From Peter Hitchens blog (edited)
Abdulaziz al-Omari, almost certainly the man who flew the American Airlines plane into the North Tower, made a pre-suicide video, which was briefly shown on Al Jazeera TV in September 2002.
In his own words, his planned murders were to be ‘a message to all infidels and to America to leave the Arabian peninsula and stop supporting the cowardly Jews in Palestine’.
He got his way. U.S. troops were withdrawn from Saudi Arabia in 2003 and President George W. Bush declared, almost exactly a month after the Twin Towers fell, that the US now supported a Palestinian State.
This was a violent, astonishing reversal, especially by a supposedly ‘Right-wing’ Republican President.
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From Peter Hitchens blog (edited)
Equality of Opportunity is presented as if it is a moderate variation of the real thing, a belief in Equality of Outcome.
A belief in Equality of Opportunity clearly implies that in all significant ways, people will live wholly unequal lives. It is a confession of unbelief in the gospel of equality disguised as belief in it.
In fact, in reality, they're against it. But they would be embarrassed and troubled to admit it.
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Source: Peter Hitchens blog
I make no apology for liking coffee.
I agree the Flat White is an improvement on the Caffe Latte, but it's still quite hard to find.
If the caffe latte is properly made (ie strong) it is a good morning drink. So is strong French-style cafe-au-lait.
Most French cafes nowadays serve a washy substance, simultaneously bitter and weak, which can spoil your whole day.
The Italians and the Spanish make a better job of it.
Also exceptionally good is the coffee served at Lou Mitchell's, the wondrous breakfast joint round the corner from Union Station in Chicago, rivalled only by the Tabard Inn in Washington DC as places where proper American coffee can be got, or should I say gotten.
In my case (I can't drink black coffee without an instant headache. Coffee, for me, has to have fat in it) it's best accompanied by a splosh of 'half and half'.
Most American filter coffee is foul, which is why I'm personally grateful to Starbucks for existing.
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Source: The author of a new book says genetics rather than chess lessons have a bigger effect on success, Helen Rumbelow, The Australian, May 16, 2011 (edited)
Researchers have found adult identical twins who were separated at birth to be very similar in almost every way. Here's Bryan Caplan:
"Adoption and twin research provides strong evidence that parenting barely affects a child's prospects."
"If parents gave themselves a big break - or redoubled their efforts - their kids would turn out about the same."
"Tiger parenting is pointless. Kids inherit educational and financial success from their parents. The most influential gift that parents can give their children is not money, connections or help with their homework, but the right stuff."
You can influence a child but it doesn't have a lasting effect.
"By the time your child grows up, the impact of your encouragement and nagging will largely have faded away."
Intelligence is Inborn
The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart reunited 100 separated identical twins. Despite being brought up in strikingly different homes, their intelligence ratings were almost identical.
The Swedish Adoption/Twin Study looked at the intelligence of about 150 pairs of adult twins, about half of them raised apart, and found an even larger effect of genes than the Minnesota study. Upbringing was irrelevant for adult intelligence.
Parents don't influence happiness
The Minnesota twin study found that nurture is equally irrelevant for both joy and sadness.
"By the time you're an adult, your parents' past mistakes are not the reason for your present unhappiness," says Caplan.
Parents barely influence education
A major study of 2,000 Swedish adoptees found that children were [only] 10% more likely to complete college if their adoptive parents had done the same - a similar result to a few other twin studies.
Family has no influence on grades
The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, on 1,700 children, found that the grades of unrelated children raised together were no more similar than those of strangers.
Parents don't influence income
"The income of the family that an adoptee grew up with had literally no effect on their financial success".
What about the Tiger Mom?
"I find it amazing that she could write that book with next to no mention of genes. Her girls are the daughters of two Yale Law School professors and people are amazed that they succeed at the things they try at?"
"In pushing so hard, Chua is messing up her relationship with her kids. I predict that her daughter will be using the Darth Vader ringtone for her mum on her cell phone."
Isn't her relationship with her kids pre-determined by their genes?
And doesn't skill training influence many things?
What if she teaches her daughter French and the daughter gets a job that requires fluency in French and English? Can that influence her income?
What if she teaches them non-aggressive conflict resolution techniques? Won't that influence their behaviour and happiness the same as any other skill?
How to have great kids
Caplan and his wife rarely make their children do things that they don't enjoy.
"The most effective way to get the kind of kids you want is to pick a spouse who has the traits you want your kids to have.
"The right spouse is like a genie who grants wishes you are powerless to achieve through your own efforts."
Can schools help kids from bad families?
Does this imply that efforts to improve social mobility through the school system are doomed?
"The evidence points that way," says Caplan. "But most social engineering focuses on really disadvantaged kids and twin research doesn't -- because really bad parents are not allowed to adopt.
"The evidence for comfortable families in the First World shows that you can change the family environment a lot without changing the child."
Really bad families are not studied
It is important to note that twin studies do not address neglect or abuse which can damage a child.
They test is whether any of the different styles of OK parenting is better than others.
All the adopting families studied were vetted as decent people but their circumstances varied enormously.
Some were working class, some highly privileged. Some parents hothoused their child with all the best tutors and fancy schools, others let them off the leash.
Yet when researchers tracked down separated identical twins as adults, they found them to be very similar on almost every count.
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Source: A Wrestling Dynasty, Dan
Macho Man Randy Savage was an incredibly determined athlete who overcame, by means of hard work, a significant setback due to an injury.
Can we learn something from him? Yes and no. He shows us what it takes to be resilient and achieve success. But when you see who his father was, you have to wonder if his dedication was not an inherited psychological disposition.
Years ago I would have said anyone could follow in his footsteps. Today I'm not so sure. In fact, I think he inherited his both his physical and psychological natures.
When Randy's father was in the navy during World War Two, he wanted to beat the record for sit-ups so he trained until he could do 5,000 at very fast pace.
Unfortunately, he did not do them according to the standard form. Did he abandon his vision of success? No. He trained until he could do 6,033 sit-ups in 4 hours and 10 minutes. This made him famous.
Now, when Randy graduated from high school, he began playing baseball in the Gulf Coast League. Unfortunately, he collided with a catcher and his right shoulder was injured badly.
He believed that he would never be able to throw a ball with the same power with his right arm so he spent 8 months learning to throw with his left hand.
"I wasn't naturally ambidextrous, but I taught myself to throw left-handed," he says. "I guess persistence was my best attribute. I felt if I can do that, I can do anything."
"The key thing about Randy is this: If your work habits measure, say, an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10, he's going to be about a 15," Braun says.
"When you're sleeping, he's working. This is no exaggeration. And anybody around him has a hard time keeping up, because he's always moving at a fever pitch."
It's the Poffo way, a relentless determination to accomplish a goal.
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From: The Possibilian by Burkhard Bilger
Mathematicians, like rock musicians, tend to do their best work in their twenties and thirties. Not so neuroscientists.
The Nobel Prizes in the field are usually earned in mid-career, after a few false starts and fruitless sidetracks.
“Biology is special that way,” Eagleman says. “It takes years for people to get a feeling for the organism—for how nature actually works.
Young people come in all the time knowing a bunch of fancy math. They say, ‘What if it’s like this computational model, this physical problem?’ They’re terrific ideas, but they’re wrong. Nothing works the way you think it should.”
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From: Watching Maria Shriver by Connie Bruck
Days before the election, the L.A. Times published stories containing accounts from women who alleged he had made unsolicited physical advances toward them, grabbing their breasts or putting his hands under their clothes.
The allegations were hardly new. A 2001 article in Premiere magazine entitled “Arnold the Barbarian” had described a range of Schwarzenegger’s sexual activities, from groping women to a sexual encounter with a willing woman—and many who knew Schwarzenegger told me that the general behavior portrayed in that article was familiar to them.
But the timing of the L.A. Times pieces seemed likely to doom his candidacy; two Schwarzenegger advisers told me that they were convinced that only Maria could save him.
She did what was required, and more — not only accompanying him on the campaign trail and kissing him for the cameras, but attacking the women who had made their grievances known.
“You can believe someone who met him for five minutes thirty years ago,” she said, in a voice dripping contempt, “or you can believe me!”
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Source: Steven Stosny (including direct quotes from): The Fear-Shame Dynamic, Temperament Clashes in Relationships, How We Shoot Ourselves in the Foot in Committed Relationships
Many quarrels are based on the idea that others must see the world the same way as you. Think of how often you've heard statement like these:
I would never have done what he did"
How could she have possibly felt that way?
I wouldn't be afraid if that happened to me, so she shouldn't either.
If I got fired I would use it as a motivator to form stronger bonds at work the next time and that's how he should see it, too.
For a relationship to work you must realize that other people are really different from you. We all have different temperaments. They are inborn and they never change and you can't force them to change or reason them out of existence.
For instance, people with high innate energy are more inclined to action than reflection and prefer some kind of external structure to guide their abundant energy.
Those with lower energy levels tend to be more thoughtful before acting, and prefer a looser external structure so they can think about where to invest their limited energy.
Likewise, one person focuses on details while the other attends to the big picture; one is more organized, orderly, punctual, and rigid whereas another is often late.
The only way to get along is to tolerate these different tastes and behaviours without thinking they are inferior or wrong.
Now the question arises, could you live or work with someone who is radically different from you? No, obviously not.
However, we are drawn to people with moderate differences in temperament that fill in our gaps.
For instance, high intensity people like people they can relax with while low intensity people are attracted to those who energize them.
Highly organized people admire the spontaneity and tendency to "think outside the box" of people who are less organized. And the less organized enjoy the feet-on-the-ground qualities of the more stable types.
Still, when you are closely involved with someone who is even moderately different, big problems can arise if you try too hard to close the gap and make the other person like you. They push back aggressively or withdraw and you push harder or withdraw.
The only way to resolve these differences is to give up trying to change them. You might be able to come to some behaviourial compromises but you have to realize that you are never going to "win". You will not gain a general victory by making the other person come around to your way of seeing things.
This means that, sometimes, you are going to feel betrayed by the people closest to you simply because they don't understand you and won't see things your way. That's when you have to appreciate your individuality and theirs. You see something important your way and they see it their way but the issue isn't betrayal. They just have a different point of view - maybe inborn.
And if you are going to work together you have to find some way to accomodate the other person without bitterness about the fact that he's different from you and without putting yourself in a strait-jacket yourself to suit him.
It sounds impossible but once we stop trashing the other guy's character, we are in a better position to focus on the non-personal problem.
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From: How We Shoot Ourselves in the Foot in Committed Relationships, Steve Stosny (edited)
Women think they know how to make intimate relationships flourish.
They have deeper, more resilient, longer lasting friendships than men and they expect their husbands to be like their girlfriends.
They are convinced that what works with girlfriends should work with a man, and would, if he weren't so stubborn, selfish, or defective.
In reality, there is no way that any of us could know how to make a modern intimate relationship work.
Biology has not prepared us for its special challenges, tradition is hopelessly outdated, and pop-psychology gives little more than platitudes or oversimplified and contradictory advice
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