Stuff

i. Contradictory Messages: A Content Analysis of Hollywood-Produced Romantic Comedy Feature Films.

“This study analyzed the romantic content of a sample of 40 romantic comedy films using a basic grounded theory methodology. Analyses revealed that such films appear to depict romantic relationships as having qualities of both new and long-term relationships; that is, to be both novel and exciting, yet emotionally significant and meaningful. Furthermore, relationships were shown to have both highly idealistic and undesirable qualities but, for any problems or transgressions experienced to have no real negative long-term impact on relationship functioning. The potential for viewer interpretations is discussed and the need for future research highlighted. [...]

Of the 107 [romantic] gestures coded, male characters performed 90, they gave 35 of 37 gifts, performed 14 of 17 favors, and took more steps to initiate relationships (63 of 84). Such a proportion of effort could lead to the distinguishing of gender roles, identifying the man’s role to ‘‘take the lead’’ when it comes to relationships. A further implication could be female adolescent viewers’ forming of somewhat idealized relationship expectations. With films depicting male characters as frequently performing exaggeratedly romantic gestures [...], female adolescents may be led to believe that such behaviors are the norm. Furthermore, by preferring to focus on behaviors between couples such as the aforementioned, it is possible that such films may make these gestures more salient to adolescents as an indication of the extent of partners’ feelings for them and the quality of the relationship itself over factors such as communication and trust.

Although there were 61 coded instances of ‘‘open about feelings and intentions,’’ there were only 4 incidents coded pertaining to trust, with 3 of these demonstrating a character’s lack of trust in their partner. [...] The lack of depiction of trust becomes particularly notable when looking at the number of incidents of ‘‘deception’’ coded. There were 82 such incidents, occurring across all 40 films, ranging from white lies so as to spare partners’ feelings, to more serious acts of deception such as ulterior motives and direct lying for personal gains. These far outweighed characters confessing their lies and deceptive acts to their partners (9), with lies being discovered by partners typically by chance or indeed not at all. [...]

Another category to emerge at this stage of coding that may have the potential to influence viewer perceptions was ‘‘being single.’’ Although this was one of the smaller categories, each coded incident (15) was consistently negative. Individuals who were single were depicted as either lonely and miserable [...], frustrated [...], or made to feel insecure [...]. Two films [...] even suggested that being single might interfere with career progression. Such a consistently negative representation of being single could, therefore, have the potential to negatively influence viewers’ feelings toward being single themselves. [...]

It should be further noted that of the incidents of affection coded, a vast minority occurred between married couples. Married couples were typically portrayed as either unhappy with their spouse [...], or were implied as happy but did little to reflect this [...]. Of the depictions of affection between married couples that were coded, many were interspersed with episodes of arguing [...], and most were limited to gestures such as brief kisses or standing with an arm around one other. Such a representation of marriage may leave adolescent viewers to see marriage and romance as disparate entities and with affection between married couples as an exception instead of the norm. [...]

What is interesting to note about the behaviors comprising this category ['relationship issues'], however, is that, irrespective of seriousness, there appeared to be no real consequences for characters’ transgressions in their relationships. [...] Such depictions do not accurately reflect the actual emotions individuals typically experience in response to acts of deception and betrayal in their relationships, which can involve feelings of hurt, anger, resentment, and relational devaluation (Fitness, 2001). As a result, with characters’ negative behaviors either going undiscovered or having no long-lasting impact on their relationships, adolescent viewers may underestimate the consequences their behaviors can have on their own relationships.”

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ii. The burden of knowledge and the ‘death of the renaissance man’: Is  innovation getting harder? by Benjamin Jones.

“This paper investigates, theoretically and empirically, a possibly fundamental aspect of technological progress. If knowledge accumulates as technology progresses, then successive generations of innovators may face an increasing educational burden. Innovators can compensate in their education by seeking narrower expertise, but narrowing expertise will reduce their individual capacities, with implications for the organization of innovative activity – a greater reliance on teamwork – and negative implications for growth. I develop a formal model of this “knowledge burden mechanism” and derive six testable predictions for innovators. Over time, educational attainment will rise while increased specialization and teamwork follow from a sufficiently rapid increase in the burden of knowledge. In cross-section, the model predicts that specialization and teamwork will be greater in deeper areas of knowledge while, surprisingly, educational attainment will not vary across fields. I test these six predictions using a micro-data set of individual inventors and find evidence consistent with each prediction. The model thus provides a parsimonious explanation for a range of empirical patterns of inventive activity. Upward trends in academic collaboration and lengthening doctorates, which have been noted in other research, can also be explained by the model, as can much-debated trends relating productivity growth and patent output to aggregate inventive effort. The knowledge burden mechanism suggests that the nature of innovation is changing, with negative implications for long-run economic growth.”

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iii. The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.

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iv. Beyond Guns and God, Understanding the Complexities of the White Working Class in America. I haven’t read it and I don’t think I will, but I thought I should put the link up anyway. The link has a lot of data.

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v. Some Danish church membership numbers. The site is in Danish but google translate is your friend and there isn’t much text anyway. Where I live almost 5 out of 6 people are members of the church. Over the last 20 years the national membership rate has dropped by ~0,5 percentage points/year. 4 out of 5 Danes are members of the national church, in 1990 it was 9 out of 10. Approximately 90% of the people who die are members, whereas ‘only’ approximately 70% of children being born get baptized. Children of non-Western immigrants make up less than 10% of all births (9,1% from 2006-2010) – so even though population replacement may be part of the story, there’s likely other stuff going on as well.

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vi. Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns. I may blog this in more detail later, for now I’ll just post the link.

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vii. Theodore Dalrymple visited North Korea in 1989. The notes here about his visit to Department Store Number 1 are worth reading.

The National Museum of Denmark

(click to view in a higher resolution)

I went there today. “The National Museum is Denmark’s largest museum of cultural history” – and sadly, because of travel arrangements and real life stuff that came up, I had but 4 hours to spend there. Which is far from enough.

Given that I spent 4 hours there I naturally liked it a lot, it wasn’t that I couldn’t find the exit (there are signs in both Danish and English). It’s a great museum. If you don’t live in Denmark but happen one day to be in Copenhagen for some reason or another, consider wasting a full day here (or you can combine it with a visit to Glyptoteket – they are located very close to each other).

I took a lot of pictures along the way (250+), I’ve posted quite a few more of them below the fold (click the link with the Danish text: ‘læs mere’ to see the rest).

Witchcraft in the 21st century

“By some estimates, about 40 percent of the cases in the Central African court system are witchcraft prosecutions. (Drug offenses in the U.S., by contrast, account for just 12 percent of arrests.) In Mbaiki — where Pygmies, who are known for bewitching each other, make up about a tenth of the population — witchcraft prosecutions exceed 50 percent of the case load, meaning that most alleged criminals there are suspected of doing things that Westerners generally regard as impossible.”

[...]

““The problem is that in a witchcraft case, there is usually no evidence,” said Bartolomé Goroth, a lawyer in Bangui, who recently defended (unsuccessfully) a coven of Pygmies who had been accused of murder-by-witchcraft in Mbaiki. Goroth said the trials generally ended with an admission of guilt by an accused witch in exchange for a modest sentence. I asked how one determined guilt in cases where the alleged witches denied the charges. “The judge will look at them and see if they act like witches,” Goroth said, specifying that “acting like a witch” entailed behaving “strangely” or “nervously” in court. His principal advice to clients, he said, was to act normally and refrain from casting any spells in the courtroom.”

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Here’s the link, via MR.

Quote of the day

“One of the many poignant moments in Ayan Hirsi Ali’s autobiographical book Infidel was her surprise and confusion when she walked around a large non-Muslim city for the very first time and observed the exact opposite of what she had always been told would happen, in any place which didn’t properly attend to modesty. Women were going about their business in shorts and skirts and skimpy tops and sandals and yet, instead of men pursuing and insulting them, they were treated with more ordinary common decency than they were treated in any of the great Muslim nations she had lived in. In places like Saudi Arabia, women krept about veiled from head to toe and men would scornfully shove them into the street when they passed, just as a matter of course. There were frequent sneers, gibes, insults, and sexual passes made to women shuffling along meekly in public. The implication, and the outright lesson, that she had been taught was that this was nothing, compared to what it would be if women were not suitably veiled. If women showed their bodies, the insults would then become unbearable.

On the contrary, there weren’t any. The tension was absent. Men were ignoring displays of flesh which would have gotten a women imprisoned in Muslim countries. She had never seen so much respect. When she remarked on it, nobody seemed to know what she was talking about.

Opened her eyes. Feminine modesty was not the solution to a universal problem: it was the damn cause of what was only a problem when it was made into a problem.”

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Link.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Found here. If you want the 1000 words, just follow the link and watch the video.

If you celebrate that kind of thing and you have a girlfriend/boyfriend (/wife/husband/homosexual partner/multiple sexual partners): Have a happy Valentine’s Day. If you don’t, that’s fine by me too – I never have.

Why culture matters…

Jewkes and her colleagues interviewed a representative sample of 1,738 men in South Africa’s Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces.

Of those surveyed, 28% said they had raped a woman or girl, and 3% said they had raped a man or boy. Almost half who said they had carried out a rape admitted they had done so more than once, with 73% saying they had carried out their first assault before the age of 20.

The study, which had British funding, also found that men who are physically violent towards women are twice as likely to be HIV-positive. They are also more likely to pay for sex and to not use condoms.

Any woman raped by a man over the age of 25 has a one in four chance of her attacker being HIV-positive.

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Here’s the link, via MR.

Stuff like this is also one of the reasons why I’m not an anarchist. I’m not inviting to a long discussion here, I’m just saying that things like these certainly do not in my mind disprove that Hobbes had a point.