These are a few of my favorite things… >_>;

And yes, I found several errors in the facts and am now disappointed.

This sort of thing is absolutely disgusting. It is terrible when anyone, anywhere is forced to have sex by another person, but for there to be a widespread and possibly growing community of pimps and enslavers in my own country makes me sick. This article from Vanity Fair looks at a recent investigation into sex trafficking which reveals much about the culture, the abuse, the close ties with drugs and domestic abuse, and the cynical “code of honor” among pimps.

I am a firm believer that you must understand a problem in order to fix it. I encourage all of you to take a look, learn what you can, and help find a way to stop these terrible crimes.

Acquitted, but the circumstances they were on trial for are extremely suspect. From Boing Boing:

Two NYC police officers illegally entered the apartment of a drunk woman, and one of them admitted getting into bed with her and wearing a condom. Today they were acquitted of rape, but convicted on minor charges related to police misconduct. One of the two said it was just a “cuddle.” If you’d like to not have on-duty police officers “cuddle” you when drunk, remember to get so plastered as to be unconscious by the time the cuddle condom comes out: the NYT reports that “Defense lawyers pointed to surveillance footage of the woman walking on her own” as evidence she could not have been drunk enough to be unable to consent to sex.

Men are promiscuous and sleep with as many women as possible, while women are chaste and selective, right? So, therefore, it makes perfect sense that the average man has had many more partners than the average woman.

Well, mathematically that doesn’t make sense. Within any given population, the average number of partners for both sexes must be equal, give or take a very tiny amount to account for prostitution, sex tourism, etc.

So why do some studies say men have almost twice as many partners? People lie. Men exaggerate and women under-count their partners when reporting. It’s about time we recognize the truth and stop stereotyping people’s preferences and habits based on superficial factors.

Also, lets keep in mind that individual variations, between one man and another, or one woman and another, are far larger than those between men and women overall.

This is an interesting article a friend shared via facebook. It examines the biological differences between the brains of men and women (which do exist, it is a terrible idea to pretend they don’t) and how those differences affect what each tend to excel at.

A key point in the article: the average man and the average woman are not all that intellectually different, it is only at the extreme ends that these differences become clear. Those extremes can be seen in highly competitive, challenging professions, like math professors and cutting-edge technology companies, which both tend to be areas dominated by men.

Neglected by the article is that fact that while men receive some 70% of PhD’s, women receive more degrees overall, with the majority of associates and bachelors degrees these days being received by them.

But to me, the most offensive thing about the article is that the end of the URL is “404”.

It really bothers me when agenda-driven individuals manipulate or outright falsify data in order to create “evidence” for a contrived point they are trying to make - especially when they point they are making relates to a real problem. Juvenile prostitution is a real, terrible thing, but when a non-scientific study which reaches an astronomically and unrealistically high number on the rate of increase in it is trumpeted about in order to get funding and publicity, it hurts the cause in the long run.

What happens when people realize how stupidly high these numbers are? They realize “Oh, this isn’t as big a problem as I thought it was” and they stop caring. Or, if they gave money and support because of how big the problem was said to be, they think “These people are liars! They deceived me to take my money, and their cause is clearly not strong enough to do anything about or else they would have gotten my support legitimately”.

These problems are real, and they are big enough to be worth solving on their own. You don’t have to lie to make people care - you just need to help them be aware of the truth. This is the same reason Fox news hurts women’s rights by claiming that video games, movies and other forms of media are behind the massive increase in rape over the past 20 years - even though rape has been decreasing rapidly during that time. By misleading kindhearted and giving people, you’re hurting not only your cause, but prosocial behavior in general. Further, you’re misrepresenting the actual victims of these problems, taking away the truth of their situation and replacing it with a dramatization because, to you, their problems aren’t bad enough to be worth solving.

I think it is terrible.