Rotundus.com

How Little Sleep Can You Get Away With?

The seven hour stupor? "But in the seven-hour group, their response time on the P.V.T. slowed and continued to do so for three days, before stabilizing at lower levels than when they started. Americans average 6.9 hours on weeknights, according to the National Sleep Foundation. Which means that, whether we like it or not, we are not thinking as clearly as we could be."

Older Parents Find More Joy in Their Bundles

"... parents under 30 are decidedly less happy than their child-free peers. Then, once parents hit 40, the relationship reverses and people with children are cheerier than those without."

More Than 1 Billion People Are Hungry in the World: But what if the experts are wrong?

"What we've found is that the story of hunger, and of poverty more broadly, is far more complex than any one statistic or grand theory; it is a world where those without enough to eat may save up to buy a TV instead, where more money doesn't necessarily translate into more food, and where making rice cheaper can sometimes even lead people to buy less rice."

Creed or Chaos

"I was once in an AIDS-ravaged village in southern Africa. The vague humanism of the outside do-gooders didn’t do much to get people to alter their risky behavior. The blunt theological talk of the church ladies — right and wrong, salvation and damnation — seemed to have a better effect."

While still arguing that there's some evidence that female politicians at the local level produce results, the author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide said the following in a recent blog post:

overall, we found no correlation between a female president or prime minister and any improvements in girls’ education or maternal health or any other improvement in the status of women.

Similarly, while some argue that having female leaders means that countries are less likely to go to war seems more complicated. It's to the female politicians that the current U.S. invasion of engagement in kinetic action in Libya has generally been attributed. To quote a recent Foreign Policy article entitled Iron Ladies: Why women leaders aren't the peaceniks you think:

these days, the old stereotype that women are more dovish than men is much less evident ... Women legislators remain less likely to send troops off to war than their male counterparts, but female chief executives and cabinet ministers are now more hawkish than men

Remember just because they might not be directly engaged in fighting doesn't mean that women can't promote and encourage further warfare.

Brigands seeking harbours

Argues that piracy goes up rather than down when countries move from complete anarchy to partial law-and-order. It's apparently due to the pirate's need to safely get the goods they've stolen to market.

When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink?

"We find the look unsettling today, yet social convention of 1884, when FDR was photographed at age 2 1/2, dictated that boys wore dresses until age 6 or 7, also the time of their first haircut. Franklin’s outfit was considered gender-neutral." This article also provides a quote from a June 1918 Ladies’ Home Journal article which stated that: "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls"

Experts want 'night eating' recognized as disorder

Apparently I must have come down with some sort of disease... night-owl-itis might be a more accurate description of my condition though. This particular illness doesn't seem to factor that in.

Weight loss improves memory, research shows

They seem to be dealing here with people > 300 lb who in the post-gastric-bypass-surgery group lost 50 lbs on average here over a 12 week timespan. I'm wondering if the effects might be more a result of a general improvement of mood as a result of rapidly slimming down.

Roy Baumeister gave to a talk to the American Psychological Association entitled Is There Anything Good About Men?. Basically it's the observation that while men dominate the upper ranks of society they also dominate the lower echelon as well. Anyways, in there he arrives at the following statement, one which I'm not quite sure how he arrived at or on what basis he'd argue for this:

That means that if we want to achieve our ideal of equal salaries for men and women, we may need to legislate the principle of equal pay for less work. Personally, I support that principle. But I recognize it’s a hard sell.

His previous statements noted that men on average work longer, in more dangerous jobs, with greater flexibility, and more volatility in an unstable economy.

I'm wondering primarily two things (in addition to serious questions about the equitability of such a scheme). Is this a way to force women who're stay-at-home mothers into the workforce, as "equal pay for less work" would seem to require that a father supporting a stay-at-home mother and children would seem to have to have their wages reduced to support such a scheme? Second, is this intended to weaken marriage by reducing financial interdependency - i.e. would such a scheme increase the divorce rate?

Perhaps he answers this question in his book...