Roads to Safe Places

• The endless amounts of white, fluffy snow! now that I get to enjoy it from inside)! Reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales" aloud three times must have worked some kind of charm.
• Going to Ikea with N. and coming home with stuff we don't really need. Like this mirror and these covers. I'm thinking about this lamp, too, but I don't like the way you can see the lighbulb and I think I'm going to get a candle instead. Or this one, which is also pretty.
• Föhn mich nicht zulooks like fun - pretty much all of this year's trainees have purchased this book which is apparently a humerous memoir of a bad trainee's exploits.
• Looking forward to baking cookies tomorrow
• The Horrible Histories series which can be found on YouTube. Have some Charles II:
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• This aritcle: 
  «The cultural genome: Google Books reveals traces of fame, censorship and changing languages»

  Abstract: We constructed a corpus of digitized texts containing about 4% of all books ever printed. Analysis of this corpus enables us to investigate cultural trends quantitatively. We survey the vast terrain of "culturomics", focusing on linguistic and cultural phenomena that were reflected in the English language between 1800 and 2000. We show how this approach can provide insights about fields as diverse as lexicography, the evolution of grammar, collective memory, the adoption of technology, the pursuit of fame, censorship, and historical epidemiology. "Culturomics" extends the boundaries of rigorous quantitative inquiry to a wide array of new phenomena spanning the social sciences and the humanities.  Entertaining summary here.
   
  Summary with brief overview here.

I found another reason today to hate Psychology Today. We all know that we're not suppose to dress like those filthy, filthy sluts, right? No short skirts and no make-up and nothing that invites the poor driven rapists to rape us, because of course those poor people can't control themselves, right?

For this reason, robbers are especially apt to target people who are flaunting material possessions or even just displaying a cocky, superior attitude. Street predators have their own word for such behavior—"flossing"—and it infuriates them. "It's a very visible reminder of their situation," Wright adds, "of being poor, that they've got nothing in their pockets."

"The same team also found that rapists tend to be more able than average to interpret facial cues, such as a downward gaze or a fearful expression. It's possible this skill makes rapists especially able to spot passive, submissive women. One study even showed that rapists are more empathetic toward women than other criminals—although they have a distinct empathy gap when it comes to their own victims. A highly attuned rapist and a woman who's oblivious to hostile body language make a dangerous combination.

Even personality plays a role. Conventional wisdom holds that women who dress provocatively draw attention and put themselves at risk of sexual assault. But studies show that it is women with passive, submissive personalities who are most likely to be raped—and that they tend to wear body-concealing clothing, such as high necklines, long pants and sleeves, and multiple layers. Predatory men can accurately identify submissive women just by their style of dress and other aspects of appearance. The hallmarks of submissive body language, such as downward gaze and slumped posture, may even be misinterpreted by rapists as flirtation."

So you can totally prevent being raped or robbed by wearing confidently, but not flaunting what you have, not wearing provocative clothes, but not too modest ones, not engage in conversation with men and walking away, but not in a submissive way because that might just be too flirty, and everyone knows that flirty women were asking for it. Because being a rape victim can totally be prevented and is all about the personality of the victim rather than that of the rapist.

I know that walking around while on the phone in back alleys is about as bright as entering the Shades before the times of the Thieves' Guild, but the attitude of this article seems to be that those who do the right things will never be raped or mugged, and that is just bullshit.
 

"[S]arcasm detection activated the neural circuits involved in mentalizing processes, as well as those of the semantic executive system. This is consistent with the notion that pragmatic processes, such as sarcasm, are closely related to mentalizing functions (Frith and Frith, 2003). We suggest that the left BA 47 might be where mentalizing and language processes interact during sarcasm detection."

"Sarcasm detection activated the left temporal pole, the superior temporal sulcus, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the inferior frontal gyrus (Brodmann's area [BA] 47). The left BA 47 was activated more prominently by sarcasm detection than by the first sentence. These findings indicate that the detection of sarcasm recruits the medial prefrontal cortex, which is part of the mentalizing system, as well as the neural substrates involved in reading sentences."

"OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada has imposed sweeping restrictions on who can donate organs for transplant -- including a ban on gay men who have been sexually active in the past five years. [...] The restrictions, which also cover drug addicts, prisoners, prostitutes and people who have had tattoos or body piercings in the last 12 months using shared needles, came into effect last month.
"A gay man who had practiced abstinence for the five years prior (to making an organ donation) would be acceptable," said the spokeswoman. "Likewise a heterosexual man who had had a single sexual encounter with a male within the last five years would not be considered acceptable even though he is not gay."

The paradox was brought to world attention by Friends of the Earth, whose ongoing campaign for producers, manufacturers and retailers to commit to sustainable palm oil was recognised at last week's Observer Food Monthly awards with the honour for best ethical contribution to the industry.

The UN's environment programme report, 'The Last Stand of the Orang Utan: State of Emergency', says natural rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia are being cleared so rapidly that up to 98 per cent may be destroyed by 2022, and the lowland forest strongholds of orang utans much sooner, unless urgent action is taken. This is a full decade earlier than the previous report estimated when it was published five years ago. Overall the loss of orang utan habitat is happening 30 per cent more rapidly than had previously been thought."

Awesome.

• "Curch claims traditional family unit under threat
• Divorce rates rise 19%
• Number of children born out of wedlock heads towards 50%"