All the shengnu ladies - Salon.com

All the shengnu ladies - Salon.com: Where are the 30 million surplus men?

Where are the 30 million surplus men?
In the countryside, tending to their parents and their farms. Because in Chinese society, it’s expected women will marry up, that’s exactly what most women in rural areas do. They migrate to bigger cities, find better jobs, marry men in higher classes, and in some cases, even end up providing more money for their parents than the males who remain on the farms taking care of them. In a fascinating piece for the Pulitzer Center, journalists Sushma Subramanian and Deborah Jian Lee report that these women are known as “golden turtles” for the wealth they are able to provide for their families by migrating and marrying up. Their “success” has given pause to China’s traditional preference for sons, all while leaving thousands of men behind in perpetual bachelorhood. These men, also known as “guan gun” or “bare branches,” are at the rock bottom of the marriage chain, and although equally strapped for an available pool of partners to choose from, are not very compatible with the average shengnu, socially, intellectually or geographically.

I believe it

Cyberloaf Monday:
Since people tend to surf the web more when they're tired, today is especially unproductive:

The investigators [led by David Wagner] recognised an event that affects everyone’s sleep: when the clocks go forward for Daylight Saving Time. Prior evidence suggests we lose on average 40 minutes of sleep per night following the switch, as our body rhythms struggle to adjust. ... [Wagner's team] found that Entertainment-related searches on the Monday after DST were 3.1% more prevalent than the previous Monday, and 6.4% than the subsequent Monday.

On Exponential Growth

fanaticflyer comments on Forgive me, but is the Singularity an event, or a process?: 
"Imagine a magic pipette. It is magic because every drop of water that comes out of it will double in size every minute. So the first minute there is one drop, the second minute there are two drops, the third minute four drops, the fourth minute eight drops and so on… This is an example of exponential growth. Now, imagine a normal sized football stadium. In this stadium you are sitting on the seat at the very top of the stadium, with the best overview of the whole stadium. To make things more interesting, imagine the stadium is completely water-tight and that you cannot move from your seat. The first drop from the magic pipette is dropped right in the middle of the field, at 12pm. Here’s the question: Remembering that this drop grows exponentially by doubling in size every minute, how much time do you have to free yourself from the seat and leave the stadium before the water reaches your seat at the very top? Think about it for a moment. Is it hours, days, weeks, months? The answer: You have exactly until 12:49pm. It takes this tiny magic drop less than 50 minutes to fill a whole football stadium with water. This is impressive! But it gets better: At what time do you think the football stadium is still 93% empty? Take a guess. The answer: At 12:45pm. So, you sit and watch the drop growing, and after 45 minutes all you see is the playing field covered with water. And then, within four more minutes, the water fills the whole stadium. This means that you think you are safe because it seems that you have plenty of time left, whereas due to the exponential growth you really have to take immediate action if you want to have any chance of getting out of this situation."

Franklin's 13 Virtues

Franklin's 13 Virtues:
 
(Source: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin; Image: Benjamin Franklin, via.)

In 1726, at the age of 20, Benjamin Franklin devised a list of 13 virtues to live by for as long as possible, in an attempt to "live without committing any fault at any time." He then focussed on one virtue each week and kept notes on his progress. He began with "Temperance."

The list read as follows (click through to read)

So I watched some Downton Abbey this weekend...

A few observations:

• I'm a complete sucker for truly good or truly evil characters - think Abigail Williams from The Crucible or Achilles from Orson Scott Card's "Ender" or "Bean" series's on the bad side. Anna, pictured at right, is one of the good ones - she doesn't take a single false or bad step over the hours and hours of the two seasons, which makes her incredibly unrealistic and yet compelling as we root for her and her Jane Austen beau. That screencap is from 11:11 in the first episode, but its context makes it obvious that she's the "good gal" and probably his romantic interest. Unrelatedly, I can't imagine how boring it must be to be an actor that never changes one's costume, with probable corsets to boot.
• I also didn't realize how much of a structure the "downstairs" staff of a great house had. For example, a housekeeper (head of women service) had the title of "Mrs," and the Butler presided over a formal servant's dinner, complete with all staff rising upon his entrance to a room. Those positions were true pinnacles, albeit within a small universe of long hours and bowing/scraping to unworthier guests.
• The show is a mixture of fairly typical television plotlines ("Father, I'm political!") made more interesting by strong characters and writing, espeically the vicious and amazing one-liners of Maggie Smith's character, who becomes much more decent throughout the series. Acting is also excellent, but I worry that cheap emotional hooks won't hold viewers without more interesting plotlines in Series Three.

If You're Bluffing, It's Best to Avoid the Question - Clive Crook - International - The Atlantic

If You're Bluffing, It's Best to Avoid the Question - Clive Crook - International - The Atlantic:

Fallows recommends this article by Paul Pillar, We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran.

[W]e find ourselves at a strange pass. Those in the United States who genuinely yearn for war are still a neoconservative minority. But the danger that war might break out--and that the hawks will get their way--has nonetheless become substantial. The U.S. has just withdrawn the last troops from one Middle Eastern country where it fought a highly costly war of choice with a rationale involving weapons of mass destruction. Now we find ourselves on the precipice of yet another such war--almost purely because the acceptable range of opinion on Iran has narrowed and ossified around the "sensible" idea that all options must be pursued to prevent the country from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Given the momentousness of such an endeavor and how much prominence the Iranian nuclear issue has been given, one might think that talk about exercising the military option would be backed up by extensive analysis of the threat in question and the different ways of responding to it. But it isn't. Strip away the bellicosity and political rhetoric, and what one finds is not rigorous analysis but a mixture of fear, fanciful speculation, and crude stereotyping. There are indeed good reasons to oppose Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, and likewise many steps the United States and the international community can and should take to try to avoid that eventuality. But an Iran with a bomb would not be anywhere near as dangerous as most people assume, and a war to try to stop it from acquiring one would be less successful, and far more costly, than most people imagine.

Obama either agrees with this analysis or he doesn't. If he agrees with it, of course, you wouldn't expect him to say so, because that would take the pressure off Iran's government. But you also wouldn't expect him to say, as he now has, that if US military action is what it takes in the end to stop Iran then so be it. If on the other hand Obama disagrees with Pillar's analysis--which is what he tells Goldberg in fairly plain words--then Fallows and others opposed to war with Iran ought to be more worried about Obama's position than they seem to be.

Super Tuesday

This is a horrible night for Mitt Romney. It's not devastating (he'll barely win Ohio), but it's really not good. Romney can't close this sale, and every state he wins via massive negativity is one that will weaken him in the long run.

Thought

There is not a trace in us of that humble acceptance displayed by our parents, who were convinced that administrative issues were of utmost importance and who considered interaction with the state as something to be celebrated. We do not feel that respect, rooted in the distance between the lonely citizen and the majestic heights where the ruling class reside, barely visible through the clouds. Our view of the social structure is different from yours: society is a network, not a hierarchy. We are used to being able to start a dialogue with anyone, be it a professor or a pop star, and we do not need any special qualifications related to social status. The success of the interaction depends solely on whether the content of our message will be regarded as important and worthy of reply. And if, thanks to cooperation, continuous dispute, defending our arguments against critique, we have a feeling that our opinions on many matters are simply better, why would we not expect a serious dialogue with the government?[...]

What we value the most is freedom: freedom of speech, freedom of access to information and to culture. We feel that it is thanks to freedom that the Web is what it is, and that it is our duty to protect that freedom. We owe that to next generations, just as much as we owe to protect the environment.

Perhaps we have not yet given it a name, perhaps we are not yet fully aware of it, but I guess what we want is real, genuine democracy. Democracy that, perhaps, is more than is dreamt of in your journalism.

- A very thoughtful piece from Poland

This weekend

Firstly, an observation: Rick Santorum is, by every account, a loving husband and father. He doesn't present a false face to the public - he's an honest, big-government-y social conservative, and he has a three-year old with a genetic convention.

He left the trail, shortly before a vote that will likely end his candidacy, to be with his daughter, and my thoughts are with him and his family. One girl, one life, is ultimately a statistic most of the time, unless we know them personally, but in this case I think such stories and our respect for them are part of a common humanity that I want to preserve.

But in other news, I had a great weekend. I indulged by inner geek and watched a tournament of my company's Starcraft 2 team, currently competing in an online tournament, and went from that event to a rollicking party at a friend's apartment, where a few stronger friendships were made. :) Saturday I went skiing, and left feeling good about it.

After a tough time snowboarding, and an even rougher ski excursion during college, I was a little wary and was planning on going back to boarding. But with all of my friends on skis, I followed the crowd, and found myself.....not falling.

So then I took a "blue" course (more difficult), and....didn't fall. Reality re-asserted itself a bit later when a snowboarder got in my way and I realized that braking and steering were mutually exclusive for me, but as I got better at sharply turning right (think Zoolander, but opposite) I felt more and more comfortable. I now feel confident on skis. Yay!

And then there was another party that will really need its own post to explain, and snow tubing today.

So in all....good weekend.

More on Epic

Steve Dickmann, of Epic, recently gave a talk in Madison about my company and its history. It's fascinating if you want to know more about Epic (looking at you, parents), but also for how new and recent the company infrastructure is.

On Yale, Sexual Assault, and College Hearings

The New York Times is up with a story about Patrick Witt, the Yale Quarterback that famously chose to play against Harvard instead of attending his Rhodes Interview in Atlanta.

But Witt was no longer a contender for the Rhodes, a rare honor reserved for those who excel in academics, activities and character. Several days earlier, according to people involved on both sides of the process, the Rhodes Trust had learned through unofficial channels that a fellow student had accused Witt of sexual assault. The Rhodes Trust informed Yale and Witt that his candidacy was suspended unless the university decided to re-endorse it.

Witt’s accuser has not gone to the police, nor filed what Yale considers a formal complaint. The New York Times has not spoken with her and does not know her name.

This is one subject with which I am entirely acquainted, with over three years of membership in Williams's student-led Rape And Sexual Assault Network (RASAN) and four years on Williams's Honor and Discipline committees. I know enough about Yale, as well, to claim some familiarity with its campus culture, which resembled Williams in many ways.

I have nothing but condemnation for whoever leaked that story to the Times.

Sexual assault is an incredibly fraught subject at colleges - alcohol and hormones often lead to decisions that one or both parties regret. In some of these cases, explicit consent is never given, and while legal line is clear (no consent = rape), the moral line is much less so, especially when memories are blurred and intentions are misunderstood. Yet while this is true, it is also true that many, many sexual assaults on college campuses (and beyond them, in the real world) are never reported - the perpetrator is generally someone well known to the victim, unlike "stranger rape" scenarios of dark alleys, self-defense classes, and pepper spray.

But such accusations are violent to the social fabric of a campus, and for this reason often remain only as rumor, hearsay, or unproven allegations. And even if brought up: what proof can be found to differentiate between a sexual act with consent and a sexual act without it, save physical bruises? Anyone who reacts by "playing dead" in the situation has no recourse, and is faced with a variety of obstacles in the form of "friends" who would never believe that anyone would do something so horrible.

This is a recipe for all kinds of problems, because in this environment, survivors are silenced even as the forces that seek to aid them can cause miscarriages of justice in the other direction. But in my experience, the former is much more true than the latter.

We don't know what happened with Patrick Witt and the unnamed female - alcohol could make both of them unsure. But now, because of the rush to raise him up as the best example of us, the media will tear him down via an allegation that Yale MUST keep private. I have been on the inside of these sorts of discussions and conversation; what is known publicly can often vary radically from the truth - students who say they want to "take time off" but are actually suspended, for example.

All we know is that the accusation made its way to the Rhodes folks, and that they wanted a re-endorsement. We know also that Witt withdrew his application. That's all.

I can make bets, based on my own experience, about what actually happened. But that's irresponsible in a public forum. Instead, I just hope that Yale's internal processes provided justice to both parties, whatever that was in this case, and that this incident does not dissuade other survivors from coming forward.

Egyptians gather in Tahrir Square to mark anniversary of uprising

Egyptians gather in Tahrir Square to mark anniversary of uprising:

Tens of thousands of Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo today to mark the anniversary of the uprising that eventually led to the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak. Political divides are still in force with liberals and Islamists differing on their visions for the future of the country. Mubarak is now on trial for complicity in the deaths of protesters. The uprising in Egypt last year was one of the initial protests of what is called the Arab Spring, which has included the slaying of Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy and the ongoing protests in Syria. -- Lloyd Young (31 photos total)

Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)