And do the grant-granters know how their money is being spent? “Women Who Make More Decisions Have Less Sex:”

“[T]he findings showed more dominant and assertive women had approximately 100 times less sex.”

These results are clearly specific to the area in which the women were surveyed. A Florida State University study also found that in countries with higher gender equality, there is more sex, so it’s no surprise that in poorer African countries, women are withholding it.

The idea that dominant women are having less sex is likely evidence, as reported by the Daily Mail, that women around the world are taking control of their sexual preferences.

What???

There are two parts of the study reported here:
1) The numbers, which say women who make more household decisions have less sex, and
2) The conclusions, which are:
a) These women withhold sex.
b) These women are “taking control of their sexual preferences.”

I stipulate up front that I haven’t come up with any possible conclusions to this study that don’t make women look bad. All the possible conclusions to numbers like this are unpalatable. But one obvious conclusion also makes men look a bit bad as well as fitting traditional intuition: Men don’t want women who make decisions very much. But that conclusion, while making men look bad, tends to work against the goals of feminism. Feminists would not want to let on that men maybe have less desire for a woman who, as the saying used to be, wears the pants, because maybe that would make women think twice about wearing the pants too often. Maybe that’s why it’s discarded in favor of the two that leave women in control–that they’re withholding sex and that they prefer 100 times less sex than their less decision-making counterparts. They prefer it that way. I find it hard to believe that’s possible even by biological norms.

But what gets me the most is how the researchers apparently not only accept this conclusion as biologically possible but also endorse it as a good rather than realizing it makes the women they’re talking about look like punishing, anti-sex shrews. This is the preferred conclusion over “men don’t prefer women who make more decisions.”

Another killer is the closing:

“Understanding how women’s position in the household influences their sexual activity may be an essential piece in protecting the sexual rights of women and helping them to achieve a sexual life that is both safe and pleasurable,” co-author Carie Muntifering told Health24.com.

We’ve gone from basic, obvious rights–i.e. the right to say “no” to any sexual advance–to “reproductive rights” to “sexual rights” and now apparently it is the job of some section of “academia” to “help women achieve” a good sex life. Please, women of academia, no thank you. Please, grant distributors, stop funding these kinds of idiotic, meddlesome studies.

Got the link from Instapundit.

Update: And thanks to Professor Instapundit for the link!

Don’t answer like this Republican when asked why he’s careful to state that he’s a Republican, not a Tea Party candidate. (And, of course, don’t let your deputies grab the camera of a citizen blogger who is asking the candidate questions. Personally, I find this blogger’s manner in asking questions and narrating his video highly irritating, but that’s no excuse either. Jim Holden, as a displaced Hoosier, I’m ashamed of you.)

But back to the political advice: When you’re a Republican stating from the platform at a Tea Party rally that you’re a Republican, not a Tea Party candidate, and when somebody asks you why you’re overtly distancing yourself from the Tea Party at a Tea Party rally:

1) Saying, as you did, that the Tea Party doesn’t actually have any candidates on the ballot and so you couldn’t run as a Tea Party candidate if you wanted to is okay, but we already know you wouldn’t even if you could, so that doesn’t advance the ball all that much.

2) Saying, as you did, that there are people who would like to “paint” you as a Tea Party candidate gives your game away–that you are trying too hard to walk the line and really do want to keep your distance. So–

3) You should say the following: “Because the Tea Party folks don’t want a bandwagon-hopper. I’ve been a Republican [for X years], long before the Tea Party came into being. I admire the things they stand for such as [X, Y, Z], and my mission here is to show them that I share and support those positions and hope to get their votes for the U.S. Senate. But it would be dishonest to identify myself wholly with the Tea Party, and the Tea Party itself wouldn’t like it if they thought I was trying to cash in on their movement. I’m a Republican who admires the Tea Party and agrees with many of their positions, and I hope they will see that I’m the best candidate to advance those positions in the Senate.”

When even I can see what the answer should have been, you’re heading toward a FAIL.

On women, regarding Weinergate, written by Andrew Klavan and linked with a Read the Whole Thing by the Instapundit:

I blame women. No, really. Women — by which I mean each and every single member of the female gender — you know who you are — need look no further than themselves to explain why Weiner-types behave toward them in this fashion. We men are always hearing complaints from women about how badly we treat them, what pigs we are, how pushy and abrasive… on and on. But what these same women conveniently fail to mention is that this stuff really works on them!

I’m angry about Klavan’s offhanded blaming of “each and every single member of the female gender,” which he then qualifies with “you know you are”–why would we need to know who we are if he is blaming every member of the sex regardless? But that’s beside the point. The point is that it is only THOSE WOMEN, the ones who fell into bed with the Governator or eagerly solicited dirty pics from a congressman or even didn’t eagerly solicit then but played along in accepting them, that he should be talking about blaming for the reprehensible behavior of these men. Does he even think women who don’t like this stuff exist? We do exist. And if he even grants that we exist, does he think we’ve never had men approach us like this? He’s wrong. We have. And we have shot them down in disgust.

I’ve spent way too much time online ever since college and I’ve seen this more times than I can count, first in the I-don’t-know-you-but-let’s-just-talk-dirty-awhile way and then in cases where I actually have known the men offline. At least one man I was attracted to for his smarts, humor, and articulate, pointed reasoning spent a lot of time trying to get down in the dirt of online sex-baiting with me. That fizzled, at least partly because I tried to simultaneously like him as a person, be attracted to him, and yet not play that dirty-talk game too much. There have been a few other men who I could tell were staying away from me because I would not play their type of game. There was a man in college who tried to ask me out after previously being shot down by my roommate. Why did we both reject him? Because we knew this was the kind of “dating” he was into–sleazy and fast, in every sense of the word.

These men are into sex and its pre-actual-sex trappings and flirtings; they do not, as Klavan plaintively says, just want women to love them, much less just one woman to love them or even one at a time. There are different varieties of men with different styles of approaching women, and there are different varieties of women with different styles of reception to men’s different approaches. I am not a feminist and usually don’t get mad about most high-level characterizations of group-wide behaviors, but this one is dead wrong. This is not a group-wide behavior; it is men who act this way seeking out and gleefully latching onto multiple individual women who are receptive to it.

Klavan should be ashamed of himself for stating straightforwardly that all women like this kind of garbage and that’s why men do it. All women don’t, and that’s not why some men do it. Those men do it to gratify their own urges, and they just have to look around for women who are open to it. And when you’re a celebrity, even the weird kind of political celebrity that is a congressperson, you have a much wider field to look around in. And as a side note, when you are a politician, what are the odds that a woman might be “open” to this kind of thing precisely for the purpose of getting you in trouble later? It’s a trump card. But Andrew Klavan seriously states without a glimmer of LOL that All Women like this, that this is why these piggy men do it, period. And the refutation is right there in Klavan’s own piece: “…why Weiner-types behave toward them in this fashion.” Weiner-types? Oh, so it’s not each and every single member of the male gender who behaves this way? And yet, it IS each and every member of the female gender who encourages and causes it? No, Andrew Klavan, the answer to that is no. The answer you gave is wrong. You fail on both bottom line and reasoning.

…the same well that only lasted a combined three seasons on network.

The series stars Jeff Daniels as the co-anchor of a cable news show who must deal with a new team after his fellow host jumps ship for another job and takes most of the staff with him. Waterston will play his boss.

Olivia Munn and Alison Pill were recently added to the cast as a sexy financial analyst and an associate producer on Will’s show, respectively.

Sports Night and Studio 60 combined on a news set. No, but it’s a show about a news show so it’s completely different, right??

Right.

Update: Speaking of never-dry wells.

George Lucas

George Lucas says he already has 50 hours worth of scripts ready for a live-action Star Wars television series — but he’s waiting for a technological breakthrough to lessen the cost of shooting.

September 11 is listed in the “Major Disasters” section, subheading “Aircraft Disasters,” of son’s new almanac. It is the only hijacking in the list–the rest are accidents–and the phrasing is poor: “Two hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon, one went down in a PA field.” No, Almanac editors, the planes didn’t crash; they were deliberately flown into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The one in the PA field did crash, and it’s due only to the heroism of the doomed passengers who did not allow it deliberately to be flown into yet another important American building full of people. I do not understand people who still insist on avoiding calling 9/11 what it was: an atrocity. It was not a tragedy, as many news outlets and politicians have called it. It was a disaster, as the Almanac calls it, but that does not give its true character: It was a cold-bloodedly planned, cold-determinedly executed mass murder-suicide.

I hadn’t before said anything to my son about 9/11. He’s only seven and it happened before he was born. But he likes to read to us the lists of events and cool facts in his almanac. It really gave me a jar to hear it in a list of accidents consigned to history. Unprepared, I ended up giving him the nutshell on what happened, including the heroism of the Flight 93 passengers, but I couldn’t do it without tearing up. He listened intently, but next time he wanted to read the list to us, sternly warned me not to repeat the story of 9/11 and not to cry. He then omitted it from the list, because the fun, for him, was quizzing us on “What happened?” in each particular disaster, and he didn’t want to hear the painful story of 9/11 again. At least he grasped that there was something different about that one.

Lisa Edelstein is leaving House.

I think it’s a little weird that she would choose to leave for what has been reported as the last season of the show. Maybe her character isn’t getting enough to do since the breakup?

I’m a little dismayed, a little okay with this. House was never going to wind up the series in a happy place, and it’s oh-so-much-more realistic that he gradually forgets about Cuddy and moves on, because that’s life. However pleasant it is to imagine that people carry the torch for their true loves forever, it’s not really all that true. I wouldn’t mind a return of the “asylum” phase of the show where House was with somebody who could have been The One under other circumstances, then let her go when he saw what the real circumstances were, and/or him meeting somebody who could be The One but we won’t know because the show ends, like Veronica Mars ended, with ambiguity and on the sense that the main thing is that House, like Veronica, is still walking through it all.

It is too bad, though, when an integral character doesn’t make it to the end. But I’m interested to see how they’ll play her out.

I keep seeing this line parroted over and over in articles about the incandescent bulb shortly to be lawed out of use:

The technology in traditional “incandescent” bulbs is more than a century old. Such bulbs waste most of the electricity that feeds them, turning it into heat.

Oh, so just because a lot of the electricity makes heat instead of light, that means it’s “wasted?”

I’m No Scientist or anything, but I seem to recall a rule, the conservation of something something, that said energy doesn’t get destroyed but converted into other stuff. So isn’t it true that if your house is a little warmer because you’re burning a lot of incandescent bulbs, it means your furnace has to work less hard to bring your house up to temp? Heat is heat, no matter the source, and likewise the thermostat works no matter where the heat is coming from. This is the stupidest argument ever for government mandate of a business & consumer decision. Yes, it’s more an issue in the summer, when we don’t want the extra heat, but we burn fewer incandescent bulbs in summer, too, since the daylight hours are longer.

But no, it’s waste, waste, waste, because that promotes the rationale for dictating our light bulbs and because reporters are cookie cutters, not writers.

Your first mistake is thinking the government has to do something big to “health care” to replace Obamacare when you repeal it. You don’t. You simply have to do something small.

Romney apparently delivered a mish-mash of a speech that I have neither listened to or read, but I don’t have to right now because I don’t plan to refute him point-by-point. Apparently in bizarro-world, he thinks individual mandates are a good idea, but plans to give every state a waiver out of Obamacare anyway. Huh?

And then there was probably a bunch of gook about what he’s going to do instead. Which leads me back to that First Mistake: You don’t have to do something big. You merely have to do something small, and it’s something a whole batch of politicians would like to do anyway: Raise taxes.

I’m No Economist(TM), and I freely admit I may have this wrong. I’m a blogger who is, yes, still in her PJs today (but cut me a break, I just finished the first year of law school YESTERDAY). The fact that more people, smarter people than I, aren’t talking about this suggests I must be wrong about some part of it. But I’ll put it out there anyway:

1) Health care is paid for through, and handed out by, our employers, mostly, because there’s no income tax on that money that’s paid to the health insurance company, either for individuals or the employers.

2) Therefore employers want to offer you a big plan that covers everything, including every trip to the pediatrician every time your kid sneezes. (What? I’m not criticizing you, I’m lampooning the way I myself take my son to the doctor. A lot.) They want to offer you a “good plan” because it’s cheaper to pay the health insurance company than it is to pay you more salary. If they paid you more salary, you’d have to pay taxes on it, and so would they.

3) These plans are wasteful and encourage both a) overuse and b) overcharging. Why should the doctor’s office care what it charges for a routine visit about what’s probably a routine cold or flu if their customer isn’t paying for it? If the customer isn’t paying for it, the customer doesn’t care what it costs. So the doctor’s office will charge more than it would if it were charging you, as high as the insurance company will pay for. It’s not because they’re nefarious, it’s because the market encourages it. When the customer is not shopping carefully, the prices rise. Sure, why not? What would an oil change cost if your insurance company paid for it every time and you paid for THAT by fifty bucks per month more on your car insurance? Do you get your oil changed every month or pay $50 a time? But you’d pay for it as if you did if it was covered by insurance.

4) If we were paying for routine doctors’ visits ourselves, we’d use more thoughtful judgment in how often we went to the doctor and we’d jolly well pay attention to how much it cost. We’d shop for the best balance between a good doctor and a good price for a routine visit, not just take whatever doctor will take a payout from our insurance companies.

5) If insurance didn’t have to cover every last little routine visit to the doctor, it’d be a lot cheaper. If we paid for it fully ourselves, without our employer paying some of it, we’d make sure we had the best balance of the coverage we wanted vs. the monthly payment. We could decide between a plan with a high deductible and no coverage of routine visits vs. a plan with everything covered and a low deductible. Our employers wouldn’t be choosing for us, and they’d have to pay us more salary to make up for the fact that they no longer kicked in on health insurance.

But all of this starts with taxing health insurance payment money just like every other bit of income. That way companies no longer have the incentive to collude with the “health care” insurance companies to roll out plans that cost too much and pay out too much, we’re on our own to choose the best plan for us, and a certain amount could be added to the Standard Deduction on the IRS form to cover what we pay out for health insurance. In other words, tax it on the front end like everything else and then include it in the back end as part of the standard cost-of-being-a-living-human-in-America on the tax refund.

What’s so hard about that? It keeps our individual power of choice and smart shopping intact, it gives great incentives for the “health care” insurance companies to bring out a number of competitively priced options, and it gives great incentives to doctors and hospitals to price-compete. Win, win, win.

**SPOILERS** for Dancing with the Stars, Week 8.

(more…)

Robert Sean Leonard has signed a contract for next season, which TVGuide.com calls “its eighth and likely final season.” Hmmm. That wouldn’t be a bad thing. I’d hate for the show to jump the shark, which it has somehow avoided so far even though some of the plots are getting wilder and Wilde-r, so to speak. Well, at least they won’t have to do anything without Wilson. Hurrah!

A Mets pitcher, specifically, who named one of his bats … Orcrist.

Then the NYT apparently managed to screw up the origin of the name, but they apologized, so all good.

A lot of people are making a fuss over the royal wedding. And a lot of people I know seem to be making a fuss over the fuss. Why?

Frank J. and Kyle Smith epitomize this attitude that the royals are worthless, although Kyle, after ripping to shreds the rest of the royal family, concedes that they’re harmless and decent.

I have trouble understanding this attitude that royals are useless wastes of space. We are conservatives, we dislike people getting government money to either do nothing or make everybody else’s lives worse. Okay. But even if we stipulate that royalty does nothing, we are conservatives, who also believe, more or less, to each his own and that tradition is important. If the English were tired of their royals they could do something about it. What’s it to us (collective, U.S.) that they still have them? And since they have them, what’s it to us (those who don’t try to follow every bit of the wedding) that some Americans are fascinated by the pretense of fairytale? We (those of us who have a few years on us) know that Kate and William will have to deal with the reality of married life, and do it under a microscope because they’re public figures.

Is that it? Do the ones sneering at the fuss resent that they’re public figures through no merit or effort but through birth? How is that their fault? They are human beings and have responsibilities and frustrations and happiness just like us.

I can’t believe I’m making a “they’re people too” argument, but honestly I can’t understand the disdain. If we had a single president who got married in office, the fuss would be ten times as big, so to those who say “What’s the big deal, they’re not OUR royals”–they’re only one step removed from being our royals. Also, most of the people following the wedding fuss for fun would not seek it out as much if the media didn’t choose to cover it wall to wall.

So give these people a break, why don’t you? They’re just people getting married with a duty to make it completely public.

Peru, Illinois, to be exact.

Tips to those accosted by the police: 1) Don’t say you flew from California to Illinois in order to go … snowboarding. 2) I seriously am wondering about this part: Why’d they consent to the search of the plane? Based on what I’ve learned about the Fourth Amendment this semester, I don’t know that the police would have been able to stop them from leaving in the plane until they got a warrant, but hey, I haven’t taken my criminal procedure exam yet, so anything’s possible.

Update: On an exam it’d better take me less than three hours to realize the answer, but I expect the police could indeed stop them from leaving in the plane on a destruction-of-evidence or Carroll-closed container exigency, if they had probable cause enough for a warrant but no time to get one. I might have called their bluff, though, and refused consent–they may not have had probable cause. Ah well, fun hypothetical on a day when I’m supposed to be studying property, not criminal procedure.