Interesting Links for 15-01-2012

[andrewducker]

• A terribly informative piece on same-sex marriage and Canada
  (tags: viaJamesNicoll canada lgbt marriage law )
• Myths about Memory. Dammit! I believed some of these!
  (tags: memory myths )
• 16 Things Atheists Need Christians to Know
  (tags: atheism religion christianity )
• Waah! Women appear in computer games now! Waaah!
  (tags: women gaming

Comments

[heron61]

Myths about Memory. Dammit! I believed some of these!

What you shouldn't believe is this article. I'm utterly baffled that the author seems to disbelieve the existence of retrograde amnesia. It's not common, and it doesn't work like it does on TV, but it does exist.

Photographic or eidetic memory is less clear, but the author is vastly overstating the case that it doesn't exist. I've read about Solomon Shereshevskii and some of the other alleged eidetikers, and the data on some of them seems solid. It's far less common than having a trained memory, but it seems to exist.

Yet another sadly unsurprising case of bad science journalism.

[gonzo21]

Wait, that thing about women in video games is a parody, right?

[andrewducker]

Nope, just a buncha dicks.

Re:

[gonzo21]

By crikey.

It's true innit, groups of people really do form communities on the interwebz where they can build self-supporting mechanisms to support their cracked out belief systems.

[pigwotflies]

Most people do that IRL to some extent too.

[bohemiancoast]

Well, thanks for letting me know that there's a special forum out there dedicated to allowing a bunch of misogynist arses hang out together and whine about how women aren't proper gamers. On the other hand, I'm pretty glad that they've got a nice comfortable space away from the rest of the internet.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, I'm glad that they're marginalised. I do sometimes worry that there is a silent, large, group that's just like them.

Re:

[cairmen]

That's not a small forum. 1 post every 15 mins or so on a single thread, 256 replies - that's a forum with tens of thousands of at least casual readers, I'd guesstimate.

Re:

[andrewducker]

Oh yes - I'm sure there are lots of people on that forum. I just wonder what percentage of the population they make up.

It does sometimes seem to me that many of my friends list (and other people living in the liberal bubble) don't seem to know how unpleasant a lot of people really are.

[kurosau]

Wow, that infographic is so full of fail. Andrew Carnegie and David Rockefeller, really? These guys are philanthropists?

At least Gates seems like he's helping, even when the foundation is investing in some of the most horrible shit on the planet.

[apostle_of_eris]

1) Bill Gates is a lot richer than Bruce Wayne.

2) Carnegie and Rockefeller are exceptionally poor comparisons unless you also debit the lives they took making their billions.