Archive for September 27th, 2012
Ultra Fuzzy sunglasses: To ultra fussy Orthodox Jews in Israel
Posted by: adonis49 on: September 27, 2012
Ultra Fuzzy sunglasses: To ultra fussy Orthodox Jews in Israel
The “Decency Patrols” in Israel, similar to the one instituted in Saudi Arabia, are selling for $6 ultra fuzzy sunglasses to ultra fussy Orthodox Jews that blur visions when “indecent girls” cross their paths on the streets…
These ultra glasses, supposedly do not obstruct clear vision a few yards away, but sexy female genders won’t be seen but blurred coming from a little distance away: As the woman is that close, the chaste man won’t have time to react appropriately and experience a hard on, or feeling horny as the girl is progressing toward him…
To be impressed with impure inclinations and sensations forced the ultra orthodox Jews to separate between the sexes: Separate in public buses and transportation means, separate on side walks, separate in public meeting and celebrations…
Posters and notices are plastered on walls exhorting the female genders to wear long loose dresses, closed collar, long sleeves…(I am not sure of open sandals). Tight Jeans, bra-less chest, shorts, loose hairs…anything that is suggestive…of round behinds and large hips…is banned in certain quarters… Sex is for procreation, and experience of pleasures is not on the menu…
The “Decency Patrols” in Israel sell also visors that block peripheral vision, the worst kind of impure vision: permitting the imagination to run wild on what could have been the sexiest of physical parts… It is dawning on me why domesticated horses and mules wear visors (on the sides): Peripheral vision is pretty dangerous…
The next step is selling decent attires to outsider women, visiting these prehistoric historical sites and quarters..
I heard that the ultra orthodox Jews are planning to domesticate termites: Digging long underground tunnels to hide women from popping into the sun light and disturbing the peace…
A few religious sects have been uncovered in Russia where women and children didn’t see the natural light for 3 decades…A few old men ventured outside to cater for the survival needs…
I bet the ultra orthodox Jews and the Islamic Wahhabi sect of Saudi Arabia are the “happiest” of mankind: The less exposure to sexual excitements the less pain and suffering…
Most common of errors…Apophenia? Patternicity? Pareidolia?
Posted by: adonis49 on: September 27, 2012
Most common of errors…Apophenia? Patternicity? Pareidolia?
There are different types of mistakes and errors that people commit, like you and me, the little people, managers,“leaders” new and old”, scientists, researchers, politicians…
1. Mistakes “reserved” for management of people https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/13-mistakes-new-learders-makes-this-taboo-number-as-if-older-leaders-ever-diminish-this-number-of-mistakes/
2. Mistakes with complicated created “professional” terms attached to them (for this post)
3. Mistakes organized in taxonomies, or check lists…https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2008/10/04/whats-that-concept-of-human-factors-in-design/
4. Errors and mistakes in conducting controlled experiment, particularly on human subjects
5. Human and machines mistakes https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2008/10/19/whats-that-concept-of-human-factors-in-design-continue-21/
6. Mistakes never reminded of…and never accounted for…and never confronted with
Let’s read the second types of complicated mistakes. I think this list was posted by Graham Coghill on freshly pressed a while ago:
“Apophenia” leads you to believe, wrongly, that you have evidence to support a position when you don’t.
You believe you can continue to gamble because you’re on a winning streak, or that Mars is inhabited because some observers see canal-like patterns on its surface. It can lead you to ignore evidence that falsifies your position, or that supports a contrary position.
What to do when confronted by this tactic?
Since it’s usually wishful thinking that leads us to find non-existent patterns, we need to guard against it first. Look for the signs, and guard against the temptation to dismiss evidence that doesn’t support your wishes.
Beware of those who try to exploit your tendency for wishful thinking and discipline yourself to accept only conclusion that are supported by real-world evidence.
Variations and related tactics:
Michael Shermer calls this cognitive bias ‘patternicity‘. It comes in several forms:
- Pareidolia – finding shapes, such as faces, in things like clouds, geological features and slices of toast.
- The gambler’s fallacy – believing that past random events can influence the probability of future ones, for example, that a flipped coin is more likely to show heads after a run of tails.
- The clustering illusion – believing that the clusters that are always found in random data actually indicate something meaningful, for example, that a run of wins in a game of dice means you are on a winning streak.
In science, apophenia is related to what’s known as a Type I error, in which a test seems to show that two variables are related when, in fact, they are not.
It can also contribute to confirmation bias, in which an investigator deliberately looks for evidence which supports a favoured model and avoids evidence which refutes it.
Apophenia is also related to the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, in which a person zooms in on an apparent pattern in the midst of a sea of data, and claims that this is the key to a significant issue (as in the fable of the Texas sharpshooter who fires random shots at a wall, then draws the bullseye around the tightest cluster of bullet holes).
Examples:
- On the political side of the debate over climate change, many fall into the trap of using current weather patterns to support their positions – a cold spell, for instance, is quoted as evidence that the earth is not warming.
- Climate scientists are reluctant to claim that any particular event is due to global warming because they are aware of the dangers of the clustering illusion. Before any such pattern can be held up as real evidence, a convincing argument must be presented.
- James Hansen and colleagues have recently published an analysis (here and here) which, they claim, shows that recent weather events are consequences of global warming.
- Here’s how difficult it is to decide whether the clustering illusion is at work or not. In the early 200s, it became apparent that there was an unusually high occurrence of breast cancer among female employees at the ABC studios at Toowong in Queensland. In 2007, an expert panel found that the rate was 6 times higher than the rate of breast cancer in Queensland, and that there was only a 1 in 25 chance (estimated p value of 0.04) that this could have occurred by chance.
- It found a correlation between breast cancer occurrence and length of service at the studio, but could find no evidence that the cancer was due to any factor related to the site or to genetic or lifestyle factors of the employees.
- A 2009 study investigated breast cancer rates in ABC employees across Australia and found no increased rates in any other site. The ABC abandoned the Toowong studios and now operates from new facilities several kilometres away. Was the cancer cluster a statistical artefact or was there some yet unidentified cause?
- In the early 1900s, German meteorologist Alfred Wegener noticed a pattern in the earth’s continental shapes. The edges of the continents appeared to fit into each other, like pieces of a jigsaw. This led him to believe they had once been joined together and he proposed his model of continental drift.
- Although this model explained many observations, it was not accepted by earth scientists because Wegener was unable to come up with a mechanism that could account for continents moving. Discoveries in the 1950s and 1960s revealed a mechanism, and Wegener’s idea became incorporated into the Plate Tectonic model.
Note 1: Here is the link to Coghill’s post, at his polite request http://scienceornot.net/2012/08/14/perceiving-phoney-patterns-apophenia/.
Note 2: Fortunately, I don’t blog full-time or navigate the net to find out who have borrowed my ideas from the 3,100 articles that I posted: That would be a nightmare to keep track of and of no benefit, as far as I know. All that I am interested in is disseminate what is controversial and need to be discussed and reflected upon…
Civilians hit by sanctions: Iran, Syria, and formerly Iraq
Posted by: adonis49 on: September 27, 2012
Civilians hit by sanctions, (Friday 10 August 2012)
Iranian civilians bear the brunt of western-imposed sanctions in terms of medicine and food shortages, and money problems…
Iran’s Haemophilia Society recently blamed the sanctions for risking thousands of children’s lives due to a lack of proper drugs, the opposition website Rahesabz reported.
“For Fatemeh, the pill she takes twice a day in her home in Iran means the difference between life and death. Earlier this summer when she contacted her friend Mohammad in the US to say she was running out of the medicine due to a shortage, the obvious thing for her fellow Iranian to do was to order it from the chemist next door and have it shipped directly to Iran.
To the dismay of Fatemeh and Mohammad, the order was rejected because of US sanctions on trade with Iran.
This week, Standard Chartered bank was accused by US regulators of scheming with Iran to hide transactions, an accusation it denies. While the sanctions focus may currently be on big institutions, in the eyes of ordinary Iranians, it is they who bear the brunt.
Mohammad, who lives in Moorhead (Minnesota) says: “My friend suffers from Brugada syndrome [a heart condition] and has abnormal electrocardiogram and is at risk of sudden death. There is one drug that is very effective in regulating the electrocardiogram, and hence preventing cardiac arrest. It is called quinidine sulfate and is manufactured in the US.”
Mohammad ultimately circumvented the problem by having the medicine ordered to his home address and sent to Iran through friends. “By the time she got the pills, her own supply was finishing within four days, what if we couldn’t send them in time? Who would be responsible if anything had happened to her?” he asked.
With the latest embargo placed on the importing of Iranian oil, sanctions are now tighter than ever. Western officials argue that sanctions are aimed at punishing the Iranian regime in the hope of forcing it to comply with international rules over its disputed nuclear programme, but many Iranians see things differently.
“Sanctions are affecting the entire country, but it is the people who bear the brunt and have the least ability to protect themselves from this pressure,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council and the author of the book “A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran”.
Trita says: “What is most concerning is that it is now increasingly clear that the people are the target. That works in theory – in democracies. But in a non-democracy, such as Iran, the ability for people to pressure their government is limited. Many in Washington acknowledge that we are conducting economic warfare. That means the entire Iranian economy is the battlefield – and ordinary Iranians are [seen as] enemy combatants.”
According to Parsi, those advocating the punitive measures hope that pressure on the people will translate into pressure on the government…
As sanctions have started to take their toll, prices of fruit and sugar, among other staples, have soared – in some cases showing three and four-fold increases. The latest controversy surrounds long queues for discounted poultry, an essential ingredient of Persian food, which has seen its price double since last year, causing what has been dubbed a “chicken crisis” and prompting demonstrations.
Sanctions, too, are compounding the country’s economic woes, sending the national currency falling to a record low and making dollars hard to come by.
The Western States says sanctions are the only option left, other than war. But Parsi said:
“That is patently false. It is the pro-war elements that are propagating the idea that the choice is between war and sanctions. The type of patient and persistent diplomacy that has resolved issues like this in the past is yet to be fully explored.”
Measures imposed on Iran’s central bank, cutting it off from the world, have caused grave problems for ordinary Iranians as well as opposition activists because it is the only official channel for them to transfer money abroad.
“Those who carry on despite hardships inside the country are also feeling more and more isolated. Activists, like regular Iranians, cannot use banks to transfer funds for conference participation, hotel reservations and to attend training workshops abroad,” said Sussan Tahmasebi.
Sussan is a prominent Iranian women’s rights activist who worked on a recent report called “Killing Them Softly: The Stark Impact of Sanctions on the Lives of Ordinary Iranians”.
Sussan says: “As a result of these [western] policies, ordinary Iranians are finding themselves caught up in the sanctions mess. In effect, the banking sanctions are forcing Iranians to rely on a cash-based economy, making them dependent on black marketeers for the transfer of funds to cover legitimate expenses, such as educational and health costs.”
Activists say that, unlike ordinary people, the regime can find a way out of banking difficulties with help from its proxies.
Sanctions are also affecting Iranians outside the country. One Iranian who is a resident of the US said that her bank account was closed recently because of a “new policy forbidding the banks to work with countries that expose them to money laundering”.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, she said: “I am living in this country [US], working and paying tax like others. I believe this is a kind of discrimination.”
• A few names have been changed to protect people’s identities
Adonis Diaries 