LindsayHarry.com

victims versus assaulters versus the media

This morning on the radio, I heard Erin Andrews talk about her stalker a little bit. She mentioned that some people said that she “asked for it” by being in the role she is in. if you don’t know how mad that made me, you do not know me at all. If Erin Andrews was asking for it by doing her job, then we’re all asking to be killed in an accident by getting in our cars every day.

I feel badly for her. Sure, some people have harped on the fact that it brought her into the limelight and gave her lots and lots of media attention, but trust me, that is not the type of attention that most professional and self-respecting women want. She’s not happy about it, she didn’t want it, and if anything it was horribly degrading and sickening to her. I cannot imagine how horrifying that had to be for her – on so many levels.

Today, I’m just mad that someone said she asked for it. I’m tired of hearing that sexual assault victims are “asking for it.” My goodness, how naïve do you have to be to make that kind of statement?

Furthermore, professional athletes can and DO sexually assault women. Big Ben, I think you’re a prick. For some reason, the average person believes that a woman who claims to be assaulted by a famous person (Kobe, Ben, etc.) was actually consenting to the act, and then just begged for some media attention. Wrong.

A lot of these men will never fit your idealization of them, nor become the role models we’d love for them to be. And most of these men are not used to hearing the word “no.” In their mind, who wouldn’t want them? The fact of the matter is that not every woman wants to sleep with someone because of their social, economic, political, power, (etc.), status.

True, many of these men who are rich and famous who pursue a woman are not used to hearing “no.” And it doesn’t surprise me at all that something like this would happen…. They don’t believe it themselves that someone said no to THEM. As many of you know, I have outright refused an advance by a professional athlete on numerous occasions. He didn’t want to hear no, and he didn’t believe me when I told him no.

I’m not denying that some women do, in fact, accuse famous men of sexual assault for media attention. It happens, probably a lot. But we absolutely cannot accuse every one of these women of lying. Sadly, because of the attention and subsequent investigations into very personal details of their lives that they do not want exposed, these women drop the charges or settle, which just encourages the behavior even more from the high profile offenders, and gives the media and general public more fuel to the fire that sexual assault victims of famous people are just liars.

Trust me, the women who cry wolf make me just as angry as the assaulters themselves.

Earth to Matilda

Why is everyone so mad about the air traffic controller who let his kid talk to pilots? I understand the importance of the job and how absolutely critical it is to the safety of hundreds (thousands) of people on a daily basis, but how was anything that was done jeopardizing anyone?

The kid cleared a jet for takeoff. Undoubtedly, the child’s father had told him what to say and was sitting there ensuring nothing went wrong. As kids, i’m sure most of us fantasized about being able to do our dream job, and if we were ever given the opportunity, took it extremely seriously, had a great time with it, and felt very accomplished when it was over. I sure did. These kids weren’t running around giving bs transmissions to pilots. Who cares if it is the voice of an ATC veteran, tom brokaw, alvin and the chipmunks, or a kid? As long as the proper information is relayed, that is what matters.

Would this be appropriate if it happened on 9/11? Absolutely not. Was anyone endangered? No. What is the big deal?

I really don’t even understand how anyone could get so upset about this, especially knowing that it was in a very controlled and supervised environment. FCC, NATC, we understand that you’re important, but stop taking yourselves so seriously.  It only makes you appear entirely incapable of adapting to anything ever. Maybe if your controllers worked in a less hostile environment, they’d hate their jobs less and stop falling asleep behind the desk….

CNN reports on Social Psychology Quarterly

Here is an article about the most poorly researched and presented study I’ve ever encountered:

(CNN) — Political, religious and sexual behaviors may be reflections of intelligence, a new study finds.

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning — on the order of 6 to 11 points — and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people’s behaviors come to be.

The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans’ evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them.

“The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward,” said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in the study. “It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people — people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower — are likely to be the ones to do that.”

Bailey also said that these preferences may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ. In fact, aligning oneself with “unconventional” philosophies such as liberalism or atheism may be “ways to communicate to everyone that you’re pretty smart,” he said.

The study looked at a large sample from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), which began with adolescents in grades 7-12 in the United States during the 1994-95 school year. The participants were interviewed as 18- to 28-year-olds from 2001 to 2002. The study also looked at the General Social Survey, another cross-national data collection source.

Kanazawa did not find that higher or lower intelligence predicted sexual exclusivity in women. This makes sense, because having one partner has always been advantageous to women, even thousands of years ago, meaning exclusivity is not a “new” preference.

For men, on the other hand, sexual exclusivity goes against the grain evolutionarily. With a goal of spreading genes, early men had multiple mates. Since women had to spend nine months being pregnant, and additional years caring for very young children, it made sense for them to want a steady mate to provide them resources.

Religion, the current theory goes, did not help people survive or reproduce necessarily, but goes along the lines of helping people to be paranoid, Kanazawa said. Assuming that, for example, a noise in the distance is a signal of a threat helped early humans to prepare in case of danger.

“It helps life to be paranoid, and because humans are paranoid, they become more religious, and they see the hands of God everywhere,” Kanazawa said.

Participants who said they were atheists had an average IQ of 103 in adolescence, while adults who said they were religious averaged 97, the study found. Atheism “allows someone to move forward and speculate on life without any concern for the dogmatic structure of a religion,” Bailey said.

“Historically, anything that’s new and different can be seen as a threat in terms of the religious beliefs; almost all religious systems are about permanence,” he noted.

The study takes the American view of liberal vs. conservative. It defines “liberal” in terms of concern for genetically nonrelated people and support for private resources that help those people. It does not look at other factors that play into American political beliefs, such as abortion, gun control and gay rights.

“Liberals are more likely to be concerned about total strangers; conservatives are likely to be concerned with people they associate with,” he said.

Given that human ancestors had a keen interest in the survival of their offspring and nearest kin, the conservative approach — looking out for the people around you first — fits with the evolutionary picture more than liberalism, Kanazawa said. “It’s unnatural for humans to be concerned about total strangers.” he said.

The study found that young adults who said they were “very conservative” had an average adolescent IQ of 95, whereas those who said they were “very liberal” averaged 106.

It also makes sense that “conservatism” as a worldview of keeping things stable would be a safer approach than venturing toward the unfamiliar, Bailey said.

Neither Bailey nor Kanazawa identify themselves as liberal; Bailey is conservative and Kanazawa is “a strong libertarian.”

Vegetarianism, while not strongly associated with IQ in this study, has been shown to be related to intelligence in previous research, Kanazawa said. This also fits into Bailey’s idea that unconventional preferences appeal to people with higher intelligence, and can also be a means of showing superiority.

None of this means that the human species is evolving toward a future where these traits are the default, Kanazawa said.

“More intelligent people don’t have more children, so moving away from the trajectory is not going to happen,” he said.

Did either of these researchers ever take a statistics class? No, I didn’t read the whole study or analyze their data (it’d be a waste of time because I can make the same data set give different results), but I’m fairly certain they never really understood how to do correlation factors to begin with. The first rule of statistical analysis is that you can make statistics say whatever you want them to.

I’m not about to propose that liberals are not intelligent regardless of how much I disagree with them.

There are a few vital flaws in this study. Firstly, many young adults consider themselves liberal, especially in their early to mid 20s due to life experience. Honestly, I’d consider my political views during college as quite liberal. Now, I’m quite conservative. Does it make my IQ any relevant? No. It makes my life experience relevant.

Secondly, personality traits have been aligned with certain evolutionary traits in tons of studies. I’m ok with that. However, the presence of personality traits in people (such as pride (national)) align with the evolutionary trait such as behavior in a group or pack. Those who show strong allegiance to the pack showed stronger national pride - conservatives. Those who displayed more individualism and less of a pack mentality were considered to align with others with liberal views. Personality traits (and therefore political views) align with  intrinsic evolutionary behavior, not with IQ.

Thirdly, IQ and sexuality are not related. Period. Monogamy/fidelity is aligned with the balance of human nature and morality. You can be smart and immoral. You can be dumb as a doornail and moral. No correlation. As for men with higher IQs being more monogamous - that is also total crap.  I had a lot of trouble with the claim that monogamy had not changed for evolved (higher IQ) women. Women don’t have a need for a single partner. Women today have the same needs as always, and nowadays it is manifested in financial support which laws have so nicely provided regardless of the presence of a male. I’m really confused by this sexuality claim. It holds no water.

If fighting against instict makes you “liberal” then anyone who is claiming to be religious is going to fall into that category. Whereas claiming to believe in God may be “safe” according to this article, it is also not popular. So where is the rebellion there?

I think a little more research is going to show that IQ has nothing to do with political alignment. Like i said, you can make statistics say whatever you want. Too bad that kind of stuff had to be published… because now we have to listen to more crap about how the democrats may actually know what they’re doing, because someone thinks that science (and math) says they’re smarter.

Gag me.

Failing Grades

Budget cuts, tuition hikes, “no child left behind.”  All of these things are helping us make the American education system into yet another failure.

Firstly, I feel badly for teachers. American children are required to be in school whether they want to be or not. Teachers are required to attempt to teach them. Subsequently, the government is blaming teachers for “failing” by judging their students’ performance. I don’t care if you have a teacher who is the perfect blend of Einstein and Mister Rogers - if a kid doesn’t want to learn, he’s not going to. There’s no need to explain this any futher; we can even look at our politicians and see how even a perfect explanation with sound logic and pure intent can fall on deaf ears. How many times have we told our politicians that this is case? And how many times have they failed to listen, acknowledge, and take action?

The longer I sit here and write this stream of conscious, the more i realize that what this all boils down to is quite possibly the fact that people refuse to be accountable, and when they are held accountable and are displeased with the outcome, they place blame.

It’s the kids’ fault. But no one wants to blame the angelic innocent child (or their parents). So there are no repercussions for the actions of the child: failure is not an option.  Even if a child is a “failure,” we’ve made it so that it isn’t their fault - it’s their teacher’s fault. Teachers cannot make kids care.  Instead of making students (and/or parents) accountable, we are making teachers accountable for the failures of others. Ridiculous.

Secondly, I do not believe that everyone should go to college. The recent global economic crisis should be another clear example of this rationale. Countless college graudates sat idly unemployed for months - even years - with degrees that did not fulfill a business or economic need.  The perception that a college degree is necessary for success is one of the most untrue statements that have ever been made.  People who were meant to be great will rise to the top and will find ways to take advantage of any beneficial resource, but a “beneficial resource” is not necessarily a formal education.  It may be anything from hands-on experience, to military/police training, to vocational school, to daily activities… and beyond.  Unfortuantely (and fortunately for some), the only thing that many college degrees prove is that an individual is willing to enroll in something beyond a requirement and to complete that undertaking. But in my eyes, a meaningless American history (i’m just picking on history - it’s nothing personal) degree to a person working as an “administrative assistant” is an enormous waste of time and money. Investment versus return… is your ROI what you had expected? Probably not for most people. And the worst part is the sense of entitlement that many people feel because they have that degree.  “I have a college degree, so I should have a job.” No, not necessarily. And now, because nearly everyone has a college degree, those who actually are meant to rise to the top oftentimes have to jump through a few more hoops such as an extra degree (that they may not actually need because they already know the concepts in both theory and practice due to experience), or a few more training classes (that are unnecessary but they need that completion certificate). That is quite unfortunate for our society as a whole. A sense of entitlement is making everyone lazy.

Success is not contingent upon the actions of others. It is the sole responsibility of the person who desires to be successful.  Because no one who makes decisions regarding education (or the future of education) realizes this, we are failing, and will continue to do so.