links for 2009-07-07

Next step: Allow them to be performed.

From Gallup, “Even worse: Having a baby outside of marriage (45% opposed), homosexual relations (47%), and abortion (56%).”

"We found no evidence that that women who are more outgoing are more likely to be raped, this is completely inaccurate, we found no difference whatsoever. The alcohol thing is also completely wrong: if anything, we found that men reported they were willing to go further with women who are completely sober. . . When I saw the article my heart completely sank, and it made me really angry, given how sensitive this subject is. To be making claims like the Telegraph did, in my name, places all the blame on women, which is not what we were doing at all. I just felt really angry about how wrong they'd got this study."

A man with erect penis reclining r. on his front on a couch, supporting his upper body on his l. elbow and looking back l. at another man who is making love to him; this second man holds the first man's thigh with his r. hand, and the first man holds the second man's arm above the elbow with his r. hand; a footstool and drapery are seen under the couch, and additional drapery hangs in l. background.

For the first time, humans lived in dense clusters, and occasionally interacted with other clusters, which allowed their fragile innovations to persist and propagate. The end result was a positive feedback loop of new ideas...it's worth pointing out that the density explanation isn't particularly new. Jane Jacobs forcefully argued against the "dogma of agricultural primacy," which assumed that farmers and agricultural innovations made civilization possible. Jacobs argued that the dogma was exactly backwards, and that it was the density of urbanesque clusters which generated the innovations that made farming possible. Jacobs writes: "It was not agriculture then, for all its importance, that was the salient invention...Rather it was the fact of sustained, interdependent, creative city economies that made possible many new kinds of work." After all, you can't learn how to grow food until you've got a system for transmitting knowledge, which is why population density is so essential.

WSJ: "Among the areas the Justice Department could explore is whether wireless carriers are hurting smaller competitors by locking up popular phones through exclusive agreements with handset makers, according to the people. In recent weeks lawmakers and regulators have raised questions about deals such as AT&T's exclusive right to provide service for Apple Inc.'s popular iPhone in the U.S."