Links - 16th September 2017 (2)

Survey Shows That Christian Media Doesn’t Really Reach People Outside the Bubble - "Two-thirds of Americans (67 percent) rarely or never watch Christian television. Those who skip church all together (94 percent) or have no religious affiliation (89 percent) rarely or never watch.
Seven in 10 Americans (72 percent) rarely or never listen to Christian radio. They include those with no religious affiliation (94 percent) or who rarely (84 percent) or never (97 percent) attend church."

Why Do Honor Killings Defy the First Law of Homicide? And Will Smaller Families Lead to Fewer Of Them? - "About three-quarters of honor killings are carried out by family members of the victim. To be specific, the victims’ brothers carry out 29% of them, fathers and (to a much lesser extent, mothers), carry out about 25%, and “other male relatives” carry out an additional 19% of them. (Of the remaining 25%, virtually all are carried out by the victims’ husbands/ex-husbands.)"

Chocolate part 1:3 - why it seizes with just a little water, ...and what to do about it - "In it's solid form, pure chocolate is a relatively stable system virtually free of water (0.5-1.5% by weight). When the chocolate is melted, the stable dispersion is challenged. If just a small amount of water (or steam) finds its way into the chocolate, the water molecules form droplets, since they don't want to mingle with the fat. Since water and sugar like to mingle, the sugar particles are wetted by the water. The result is "the sugar bowl effect", just as when a few drops of water are spilled into a sugar bowl. The tiny sugar particles in the chocolate become moist and cling together giving larger lumps (agglomerates). The result is an inhomogeneous mixture between these sugar agglomerates and the cocoa fat mixture. These won't mix evenly because the sugar has gone watery (the lecithin is probably not capable of stabilising such large amounts of hydrophilic constituents). Since sugar is a major ingredient in chocolate, it all goes grainy. A water content of 3-4% by weight is enough to make the chocolate seize. Since the chocolate might contain som water already the critical amount of added water might be as low as 1.5% by weight (1/3 teaspoon on 100 g, ref. Afoakwa et al.). Add some more water, and everything is "fine" again
If the chocolate has seized, there is really no way back to the original chocolate. However, if some more water is added, the grainy mass magically turns silky smooth again. What happens is that the emulsion inverts; whereas fat was the continuous phase in chocolate, now water is the continuous phase and the fat is distributed/"dissolved" in the water"

Child Support Accountability: Where Is It? - "We expect fiscal accountability on so many levels in our society: of government, of corporations, of financial institutions, of recipients of welfare and food stamps. We are outraged by the fact that lack of personal financial accountability contributed in large part to the housing bust and our present recession. Why then, does it seem that we simply do not care if child support is not used for the direct needs of the children for whom it is being paid?"

What Parents Should Know About Giving Hormones To Trans Kids - "The United States Endocrine Society says that cross-gender hormones should not be used on kids under the age of 16. The standards in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Australia agree. The reason is simple: Cross-sex hormones have irreversible effects on fertility. Cross-gender hormone treatments can sterilize kids—not even Dr. Frankenstein would do that.
So I was shocked to learn that physicians administer cross-gender hormones to kids under the recommended age of 16 and many gender specialists believe “it is best to slowly initiate cross-gender hormones at the same time that the patient’s peers are entering puberty, typically around age 12-14”... A September 2014 report from the Hastings Center by Jack Drescher and Jack Pula says a diagnosis of gender dysphoria in childhood “does not inevitably continue into adulthood” the majority of the time. The majority of trans kids will not choose to transition as adults... Gender dysphoria has been theorized to be a consequence of differences in the brain, but studies don’t find any. A recent study at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, says; “The present data do not support the notion that brains of male to female transgenders are feminized.” The study could not find a difference in the brains between heterosexual men and that of male to female transsexuals. The brains in trans boys are no different than non-trans boys... My concern for trans kids is forged from my own life as a child transgender. I was told that because my strong feelings of being a girl on the inside had persisted for so long that I needed to alter my external appearance to match, from man to woman. Because I was desperate for relief, I followed all the recommendations for someone with gender dysphoria and underwent the transition. I successfully lived and worked as a female for eight years. But after eight years, the male came back. My biological sex had never changed, no matter how many procedures I underwent or how many hormones I took. My life was never the same and my body was forever mutilated. People say to me now, “Too bad. It was your choice. You should have made a more informed decision.” Through my website, SexChangeRegret.com, I hear from people with similar experiences as mine, and in every case, the gender dysphoria is a result of childhood developmental issues. Treating the psychological or psychiatric disorder is the answer, not changing genders."
Transmania means you must give kids (many of whom may not become transgendered adults) hormones that can potentially harm them

When Transgender Kids Transition, Medical Risks are Both Known and Unknown - "“We do know that there is some decrease in bone density during treatment with pubertal suppression,” Finlayson said, adding that initial studies have shown that starting estrogen and testosterone can help regain the bone density. What Finlayson said there isn’t enough research on is whether someone who was on puberty blockers will regain all their bone strength, or if they might be at risk for osteoporosis in the future. Another area where doctors say there isn’t enough research is the impact that suppressing puberty has on brain development... The stakes are higher for children who want to continue physically transitioning by taking the hormones of their desired gender"

Hasbro still hasn’t released a Star Wars Monopoly set with Rey due to ‘insufficient interest’ - "Hasbro eventually produced the game piece for the Monopoly set, which it sold in several countries — but not the United States, according to company spokeswoman Julie Duffy. The explanation? “Insufficient interest.” Fans who really want the piece can contact Hasbro’s customer service line to request a piece. Hasbro’s explanation that there’s been insufficient interest might be technically correct: there could very well be few people asking specifically for a Star Wars Monopoly set with a Rey figure, but this ducks the bigger issue at hand: ensuring that female characters are fairly represented on toy shelves"
"Fairness" means companies must make something there's no demand for

Does Disney want its directors to have creative freedom? - "Disney’s incompatibility with the likes of Jenkins, DuVernay, and Edwards, and now the sudden ouster of Lord and Miller, paints a picture of a company that makes heavy demands and is averse to risk, no matter how much it values talent."

Man with 'DEVAST8' face tattoo says he can't find work - "A young man with a tattoo on his face reading ‘DEVAST8’ has said he is having difficulty finding work after being released from prison. Mark Cropp, from New Zealand, had been inebriated when his cell mate - who is also his brother - gave him the tattoo, while he was completing a two-year sentence in prison for an aggravated robbery charge. The tattoo was supposed to be small and go along his jawline, but after the pair drank an improvised alcoholic beverage made from fermented apples, sugar and bread, the mark turned out to be significantly larger."

How the privileged prevent other people's children from doing well - "Dr Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution recently published a book called Dream Hoarders, detailing some of the structural ways the well-educated rig the system. The most important is residential zoning restrictions. Well-educated people tend to live in places like Portland, New York and San Francisco that have housing and construction rules that keep the poor and less educated away from places with good schools and good job opportunities. These rules have a devastating effect on economic growth nationwide. Research by economists Hsieh Chang-tai and Enrico Moretti suggests that zoning restrictions in the nation's 220 top metro areas lowered aggregate United States growth by more than 50 per cent from 1964 to 2009. The restrictions also have a crucial role in widening inequality. An analysis by economist Jonathan Rothwell finds that if the most restrictive cities became like the least restrictive, the inequality between different neighbourhoods would be cut in half. Dr Reeves' second structural barrier is the college admissions game. Educated parents live in neighbourhoods with the best teachers, they top off their local public school budgets and they benefit from legacy admissions rules, from admissions criteria that reward children who grow up with lots of enriching travel and from unpaid internships that lead to jobs."
You might as well say meritocracy is rigging the system too, since intent doesn't seem to be needed

A Fancy Meat Primer for Those Who Didn't Study Charcuterie in High School - "How embarrassing, right? I mean, she obviously was balking at the Italian words, and not the prices of the gourmet sandwiches. (Everyone knows you can’t be Italian and poor.) At least he didn’t take her to a French bistro or the IKEA food court, as the KÖTTBULLAR would have been the end of it all. Also, thank goodness for Mexican food, a cuisine with non-English menu items that are more accessible to those without an advanced degree of some kind. (I’d like to think Brooks ordered a mole dish just so he could give a mini-lecture on how mole is not a culinary monolith.) Anyway, I wouldn’t want such an unfortunate scenario to befall you, especially if you have a friend that likes to take you to lunch as some sort of classist cultural litmus test, so I’ve put together a little primer for these primo Italian meats"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Kill A Chicken To Scare The Monkey - "[On Thailand's lese-majeste law] It was a moment of foolishness she explained. She'd been angry with her husband who had gone off with another woman. Her friend had suggested getting back at the woman by setting up a Facebook account in her name and posting controversial comments. [Name] says it was the friend who published the offending posts, and that she'd not known they would involve the monarchy. She says she had an alibi and that she wanted to plead not guilty. But her lawyer had persuaded her to change her plea to avoid what would otherwise have been a life sentence. So the strength of the state's case against her was never tested in court."

Thai lese-majeste trial shut "for national security"

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Identity Politics - "A few days before we spoke the last British forces had by mutual agreement left the city for good. The date was nineteen ninety four. But I wanted to ask Kohl about rumblings of discontent, especially in Britain, about the moves by Germany and France towards the so called political union in europe including the creation of a European single currency. In a foretaste of today's events British Conservative eurosceptics were looking to put the brakes on this European project. Until then I'd only seen Helmut Kohl get angry once before when he was pelted with eggs by protesters in Eastern Germany who accused his government of ignoring them... He said brusquely: I will not allow it... For him there was just one red line. He would not let anyone stand in the way of Germany and like minded countries which had chosen to bind themselves more tightly together"

philosophy bites: Janet Radcliffe Richards on Men and Women's Natures - "In the early days of intelligence testing women came up better on IQ tests than men and for that specific reason they introduced the pattern recognition parts of the test which men were better at than women. I personally don't think that sex equality of outcome should be one of our aims, but this takes a great deal of arguing... [On gender differences] It's a disastrous mistake not to investigate them as far as we can because this is terrible for women too. And we may be forcing women into things that are uncongenial, making demands which aren't suitable. We need to understand the nature of the raw material we're working with if we're to achieve anything good with it"

philosophy bites: Chandran Kukathas on Hayek's Liberalism - "Hayek's not really quite as hostile to government as people think. Especially if you look at some of his earliest philosophical and political writings, what he's concerned to do is not so much criticize government as to explain what its proper role is and he has really quite an extensive role for government, which is one of the reasons why he's drawn a lot of criticism from libertarians. But in one of his earliest essays he argues that one of the problems with twentieth century liberals was that they really took too uncritically the phrase laissez-faire as if that would simply solve all the problems. Really the task was to try to articulate what were the things that were best done by government, what were the things that government should stay clear of... I would make a distinction between the earlier and the later Hayek. The Hayek of the nineteenth thirties and forties going up to the Hayek of nineteen sixty when he wrote the Constitution of Liberty had probably a much more extensive role for government in mind... He always retained a certain view that there was something that we simply needed government for... he was concerned that the outcomes of markets could mean destitution for some people and so in spite of his critique of socialism and the welfare state he did on the whole defend institutions such as a welfare minimum to make sure that people couldn't fall below a certain point so that if the market did in fact not provide for some people they would not fall in hard times... he hoped that there would never be Hayekians in the world because he thought that followers were always a bad idea and followers were always worse than the people they followed. Marxist were much worse than Marx. Keynesians were much worse than Keynes. And so he really hoped there won't be any Hayekians"

philosophy bites: Michael Sandel on Genetic Enhancement in Sport - "The worry that it will corrupt sports in athletic competition as a place where we admire the cultivation and display of natural gifts. It will distance us from the human dimension of sport. If you imagine a future when it were possible to engineer a bionic athlete, let's say in baseball which is my favorite sport. Who could hit every pitch for a home run of six hundred feet. It would be maybe an amusing spectacle but it wouldn't be a sport. We might admire the pharmacist or the engineer but would we admire the athlete? We would lose contact with the human dimension in the display of natural human gifts that I think is essential to what we admire and appreciate in sports"

He’s One of the Most Famous Political Operatives in America. America Just Doesn’t Know It Yet. - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "He went to see Hayek, who at that time, I think, was teaching at the L.S.E., the London School of Economics. [He] said, “I’ve read your book. It’s great. I want to help put these ideas into practice. I’m going to run for parliament as a conservative M.P.” Hayek said to him, “If you want to change things, don’t do that because the first thing you have to do is win the battle of ideas. Don’t go into Parliament. The better use of your time, money and effort will be to set up a think tank.” That’s exactly what he did. And so Rachel’s grandfather set up the Institute of Economic Affairs, which became the powerhouse think tank for free market thinking in the U.K. and around the world and incubated a lot of the ideas that Margaret Thatcher adopted and implemented as prime minister...
At least in America — everyone complains about Washington, the federal government — but at least the president is elected. At least Congress is elected. In the E.U. situation, you’ve got a centralized bureaucracy that is driving policy. People point to the European Parliament and so on and the fact that representatives of elected governments sit on the council of ministers that make decisions. That’s all true. But the driving force of policy initiation in the E.U. is the European Commission, which is an appointed body. To me, there’s a fundamental objection there, which is this is not democratic. That means it is wrong — even if the outcomes may from time to time be good. It doesn’t matter. It’s not democratic. It’s wrong. I’m all in favor of a single market, which was the initial idea that Britain signed up to. That’s good and helpful. But when it turns into, as it has, a move towards a European government, but one that is not democratically accountable, then I can’t support that regardless of its actual impact because I object to it on principle. They want a United States of Europe run from Brussels. Britain doesn’t. Therefore, you’ve got to accept that reality and leave."