Cool Stuff, Jokes, Just Plain Silly | TheFourEyes December 13, 2007 | 
Comments (0)
IQ Tests And Race… What I.Q. Studies Can Tell You About Racial Differences
The typical teen-ager of today, with an I.Q. of 100, would have had grandparents with average I.Q.s of 82—seemingly below the threshold necessary to graduate from high school. And, if we go back even farther, the Flynn effect puts the average I.Q.s of the schoolchildren of 1900 at around 70, which is to suggest, bizarrely, that a century ago the United States was populated largely by people who today would be considered mentally retarded.
The big gains on the IQ tests are largely in the category known as “similarities,” where you get questions such as “In what way are ‘dogs’ and ‘rabbits’ alike?” Today, we tend to give what, for the purposes of I.Q. tests, is the right answer: dogs and rabbits are both mammals… A nineteenth-century American would have said that “you use dogs to hunt rabbits.”
The psychologist Michael Cole and some colleagues once gave members of the Kpelle tribe, in Liberia, a version of the WISC similarities test: they took a basket of food, tools, containers, and clothing and asked the tribesmen to sort them into appropriate categories. To the frustration of the researchers, the Kpelle chose functional pairings. They put a potato and a knife together because a knife is used to cut a potato. “A wise man could only do such-and-such,” they explained. Finally, the researchers asked, “How would a fool do it?” The tribesmen immediately re-sorted the items into the “right” categories. It can be argued that taxonomical categories are a developmental improvement—that is, that the Kpelle would be more likely to advance, technologically and scientifically, if they started to see the world that way. But to label them less intelligent than Westerners, on the basis of their performance on that test, is merely to state that they have different cognitive preferences and habits. And if I.Q. varies with habits of mind, which can be adopted or discarded in a generation, what, exactly, is all the fuss about?
An I.Q., in other words, measures not so much how smart we are as how modern we are.
Dr. Flynn collected intelligence-test results from Europe, from North America, from Asia, and from the developing world, until he had data for almost thirty countries. In every case, the story was pretty much the same. I.Q.s around the world appeared to be rising by 0.3 points per year, or three points per decade, for as far back as the tests had been administered. For some reason, human beings seemed to be getting smarter.
“The mind is much more like a muscle than we’ve ever realized,” Flynn said. “It needs to get cognitive exercise. It’s not some piece of clay on which you put an indelible mark.” The lesson to be drawn from black and white differences was the same as the lesson from the Netherlands years ago: I.Q. measures not just the quality of a person’s mind but the quality of the world that person lives in.
Woman Gang Raped By Halliburton/KBR Co-Workers In Iraq… No Charges Filed… Does The VP Know About The Cover Up?
Jamie Leigh Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming “20/20″ investigation, said an examination by Army doctors after the incident showed she had been raped “both vaginally and anally,” but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.
A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.
“Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,” Jones says she was told.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
“It felt like prison,” says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming “20/20″ investigation. “I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened.”
Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.
“I said, ‘Dad, I’ve been raped. I don’t know what to do. I’m in this container, and I’m not able to leave,’” she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.
“We contacted the State Department first,” Poe told ABCNews.com, “and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen” — from her American employer.
Obama As JFK?.. Edwards As FDR?.. I Hope He Doesn’t Mean That Literally… Edwards Leading Us In The Next World War… Obama Tragically Ending A Camelot-Like Period.
JB Powell interviews Air America dj Thom Hartmann, who has a new book out about American political discourse called Cracking the Code. This interview is published on Pop and Politics as well as HuffPost’s OffTheBus.
Some of the Questions:
Q: In the current crop of Presidential aspirants right now, who stands out in terms of communication skills?
A: John Edwards is a brilliant communicator. Barrack Obama is a brilliant communicator. I think Edwards has the potential to be the next FDR and I think Barrack has the chance to be the next John Kennedy.
Q: In 2006, we saw Dick Cheney and the President get up and say, basically, ‘If you vote for Democrats, you’re risking a terrorist attack.’ I expect a lot worse in the upcoming 2008 election. Do you?
A: Absolutely. And probably in terms of world events. The Republicans are going to do everything they can, in my opinion, to increase our vulnerability to a terrorist attack. There’s considerable evidence that before the 2001 attack, whether it was intentional or not, nobody was paying attention and everybody was asleep at the switch. George Bush had over fifty different warnings that 9-11 was coming, including the famous memo [Presidential Daily Briefing] that was delivered in August.
He knew that planes could be hijacked because when he was in Italy in March of that year, he had to go sleep on an aircraft carrier, because they had specific, credible intelligence that Bin Laden himself was behind a plan to hijack an aircraft and crash it into a hotel where Bush was sleeping. So you’d think in March when that happened they would have put two and two together. But Bush had put Dick Cheney in charge of the counter-terrorism task force and that task force never even bothered to meet until September of 2001.
So 9-11 wasn’t a failure of intelligence. It was the most spectacular failure of the executive branch in our history arguably. And yet they use it to their benefit. And I suspect that they will do it again, in terms of using it to try to win elections.
It would work tremendously to the Republicans advantage if there was a terrorist attack between now and the election. And even if there’s not, I guarantee you, they’re going to be amping up the fear of terror, particularly just before the election. …It was very psychologically effective. And from a marketing point of view, it was perfect, and it was absolutely intentional.
Escort Agency Launches Virgin Service For Geeks… Do They Have Gift Cards?
A Dutch escort agency is launching a special virgin service for computer geeks.
Sociology student Zoe Vialet, who set up Society Service last year, says she has had a lot of demand from virgins.
She says most of them work in the IT sector and added: “They are very sweet but are afraid of seeking contact with other people. They mean it very well but are very scared.
“Every booking lasts three hours minimum. Longer is possible, shorter not. We take the time to take a bath together, do a massage and explore each others body.
“When the date is over, you will have had a fantastic experience, and you will be able to pleasure a woman.”
Zoe and her colleague Marieke have specially trained five girls to look after the needs of virgins, reports De Telegraaf.
She added: “You better practice before having a girlfriend. Woman expect men older than 30 having had some experience.
“Some men need a little bit of help. But it makes them happy and they are glowing .There is nothing more terrible than dying as a virgin.”
Cool Stuff, Information, Just Plain Silly, Uncategorized | TheFourEyes December 12, 2007 |
Comments (0)
Gay flamingos adopt chick
Two gay flamingos have become proud foster parents after taking an abandoned chick under their wings.
Pink pair Carlos and Fernando were so desperate to have a family they started stealing eggs at the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust, Slimbridge, Gloucestershire.
When one of the Greater Flamingo nests was abandoned, they were considered the number one choice to “adopt” the chick.
The unhatched egg was whisked off to an incubator where it was warmed up and monitored, reports Sky News.
After the chick was born, it was carefully placed in an old eggshell, which was taped up and returned to the gay couple’s empty nest.
The pair were soon seen ‘talking’ to the chick inside the egg and a little while later it hatched for a second time – to be greeted by its foster parents.
WWT spokeswoman Jane Waghorn said: “Fernando and Carlos are a same sex couple who have been known to steal other Flamingos’ eggs by chasing them off their nest because they wanted to rear them themselves.
“They were rather good at sitting on eggs and hatching them so last week, when a nest was abandoned, it seemed like a good idea to make them surrogate parents.”
Carlos and Fernando, who have been together for about six years, can feed their chick without any female help – by producing milk in their throat.
For Sherry – Chemistry Jokes
- What’s the difference between Chemistry and cooking? In Chemistry, you should never lick the spoon.
- Did you hear about the chemist who was reading a book about Helium? He just couldn’t put it down.
- Why are chemists great for solving problems? They have all the solutions.
- What do you do with a dead chemists? Barium
- A small piece of ice which lived in a test tube fell in love with a Bunsen burner. “Bunsen! my flame! I melt whenever I see you” said the ice. The Bunsen burner replied :”It’s just a phase you’re going through”.
- A neutron walks into a restaurant and orders a couple of cokes. As she is about to leave, she asks the waiter how much she owes. The waiter replies, “For you, No Charge!!!”
- If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the precipitate!
-
Two atoms are walking down the street.
Says one atom to the other, “Hey! I think I lost an electron!”
The other says, “Are you sure??”
“Yes, I’m positive!”
- Why does hamburger have lower energy than steak? Because it’s in the ground state.
- According to a chemist, why is the world so diverse? Because it’s made up of alkynes of people.
And A Bonus For The Real Chemists Out There:
What weapon can you make from the elements potassium, nickel and iron? A KNiFe.
Jokes | TheFourEyes December 11, 2007 |
Comments (0)
ATM Theft Devices…
This is a portable reader that thieves put over the slot on a real ATM machine… It reads your card on the way into the real slot. It was developed and tested in Russia… Look for it at an ATM near you soon.
This is a little camera placed in a brochure holder that is strategically placed so it can read your pin number and take a picture of your card also… This has already been spotted in the USA.
Road kill teddies
A soft toy designer has come up with a macabre new range of road kill teddies.
The first to be launched is Twitch the Raccoon which comes complete with its own body bag to keep the maggots out, reports Metro.
Twitch also has an identity tag revealing it was “run over over by a milk float last Thursday, near the Hangar Lane Giratory system in London”.
A zip on each side of the toy allows the owner to remove Twitch’s innards and stuff them back in again. A tyre print runs across its back.
Creators, Compost Communications, style themselves ‘toy terrorists’ and according to their website: “We squash and burn and bludgeon and maim. But we’re also toy fanatics like you. We love toys.”
Toy creator Adam Arber, 33, from London, said: “I got the idea from looking at my mother-in-law’s dog which is quite ugly and I thought it would make a great toy. A friend of mine had taken some pictures of road kill and the two things gelled into one idea.”
He said he thought the toys, which cost £25, would appeal to people with a sense of humour and “probably not anyone easily upset”.
Coming soon are other characters including Grind the rabbit, Splodge the hedgehog and Pop the weasel.
The toys go on sale this week at Play Lounge in Soho, London, and from mid-December on www.roadkilltoys.com.
World’s oldest condom
The oldest surviving condom in the world has gone on display in an Austrian museum.
The reusable condom dates back to 1640 and is completely intact, as is its orginal users’ manual, written in Latin.
The manual suggests that users immerse the condom in warm milk prior to its use to avoid diseases.
The antique, found in Lund in Sweden, is made of pig intestine and is one of 250 ancient objects related to sex on display at the Tirolean County Museum in Austria this summer.
Study: Attractive People Get Better Job Offers… No Wonder I Get Lousy Jobs!
Job applicants who are attractive get better job packages offered than average looking interviewees, British researchers found.
Study authors Carl Senior and Michael J.R. Butler of Aston University in Birmingham found that female interviewers were found to allocate attractive looking male interviewees more high status job packages than average looking men.
Average looking men also received lower status job packages than average looking women. Male interviewers did not differ in the number of high or low status job packages that were given to attractive looking interviewees of either sex, though the male interviewers gave out more low status job packages overall, irrespective of the sex of the interviewee, the researchers found.
“When someone is viewed as attractive, they are often assumed to have a number of positive social traits and greater intelligence,” the researchers said in a statement. “This is known as the ‘halo effect’ and it has previously been shown to affect the outcome of job interviews.”
The findings are published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.
From NewsDaily.com
Reminiscing… A Few Stories
Every now and then… I write a short story about my time spent in Thailand a lot of years ago. Alf, over at Corkscrew-Balloon.com can usually get me going by sending me pictures of my old haunts and hangouts… This time he went out and found the house that I used to own in Bangkok when I first got married (the second time). So… I ended up sending a page or two of remembrances about some of the celebrities that visited there and of filming movies and such. It was a busy and exciting time.
Corkscrew-Balloon has been posting virtually every day since at least 1996 and was the inspiration for me to start LCO.
The House of Los Cuatro Ojos is grateful to The House of Corkscrew-Balloon Dot Com for devoting space to the past exploits of this high mileage old dog.
Essays, Information, Uncategorized | TheFourEyes December 10, 2007 |
Comments (0)
Woman Breaks INTO Jail To Have Sex With Her Husband… Gets Caught… And Gets Away With It!
A woman was reportedly caught after breaking into a jail to have sex with her husband.
The wife sneaked into Standford Hill open prison on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, in the early hours of Sunday, according to The Sun.
But she was caught by a guard in the grounds as she tried to leave. An inquiry into the security breach is under way.
The Sun’s source said: “She got in by climbing over a fence and her husband was waiting for her.
“He took her into to his cell for a romp and she left a short while later. A few people knew about it. Then while she was trying to leave she was spotted.
“She stood out because she was the only woman in an all-male jail!”
Her husband has now been sent to a higher security prison.
A Prison Service spokesman said: “A member of the public was found in the grounds of Standford Hill open prison. The intruder was challenged by a staff member.
“A prisoner has been returned to a closed establishment. Police are investigating.”
Kent Police said a woman was arrested on suspicion of criminal trespass and later released with no further action.
What do you call a pig with six legs and two willies?
A piglet born in Croatia with six legs and two penises has been nicknamed Octopig.
Owner Ivica Seic came up with the nickname, daily newspaper Vecernji List reported.
The farmer from the village of Vrpolje said Octopig also has two anuses, and was growing so fast they had decided to keep him as a pet.
Ivica said: “Who knows, maybe we can breed more although the two penises might be a problem.”
Man Shoots His Car… Hit By Ricochet
A US man injured himself in both legs after trying to loosen a stiff wheel-nut by shooting it with his gun.
The 66-year-old man, from Washington state, was repairing his car outside his home when the accident took place.
Shooting at the wheel from arm’s length with a 12-gauge shotgun, he was peppered with buckshot and debris, reports the BBC.
The man – who police say was on his own and sober – was taken to hospital with severe, but not life-threatening, injuries.
The man, from South Kitsap, southwest of Seattle, had been repairing his Lincoln Continental for two weeks, according to the police, and had removed all but one of the nuts on the right rear wheel.
Frustrated by the one remaining nut which refused to budge, he resorted to fire power in an effort to shift it.
“He’s bound and determined to get that lug nut off,” said Deputy Scott Wilson, a spokesman from the sheriff’s office.
He sustained injuries from his feet to the middle of his abdomen, with some pellets reaching as high as his chin, police said.
Today’s Insults –
His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork. – Mae West
You were born with your legs apart. They’ll send you to the grave in a Y-shaped coffin.
- Joe Orton
Pushing forty? She’s hanging on for dear life. – Ivy Compton-Burnett
You look into his eyes, and you get the feeling someone else is driving. – David Letterman
I see her as a great stampede of lips directed at the nearest derriere. – Noël Coward
Insults | TheFourEyes December 9, 2007 |
Comments (0)
Bride Jokes… “I Don’t” … Joke Backfires…
A bride who jokingly replied ‘I don’t’ found the joke was on her when the registrar refused to go ahead with the ceremony.
Tina Albrecht, 27, was to marry fiancé Dietmar Koch, 29, at a castle in Steyr, Upper Austria.
But after the receptionist tried to bring a bit of humor into the ceremony by saying “I don’t” before correcting herself, the authorities called the wedding off.
Under Austrian law, if either party replies to the key question in the negative the wedding is canceled and cannot be rescheduled for a further 10 weeks – to prevent forced marriages.
Ms Albrecht said: “We had to send all our guests home and now we have to wait until March before we can try again. In retrospect it was probably not so funny.”
Frustrated Wife Takes Job In A Brothel… I AM NOT Showing This Post To My Wife.
A frustrated German housewife says she has been forced to take a job in a brothel since her husband lost his sex drive.
Adelheid Kran, 58, from Berlin said: “I like sex, I like it a lot, but my husband Guenther has no appetite for sex anymore and does it about once a year.”
She added in order to combat the tension between them caused by her sexual frustration she has started working in a “mature ladies” brothel.
“I saw an ad in the paper looking for mature women and decided to try it. Guenther’s not thrilled about it, but I can’t hem myself in just because he’s not up for it and we’re actually getting on better now.
“It’s not something I do full time, and I only have sex with the men I like. In a job like this, you have to keep a certain standard,” she said.
From AnaNova.com
Study: Polygamous Men Have Lower Testosterone… Well DUH!!
While it’s nice to have this little fact verified by modern science… And as much as we menfolk like to fantasize on having more than one wife… Any man who’s been married more than 5 years and survived could have told them how much emasculation ONE woman is capable of… And then they’d just need to multiply by however many theoretical wives… There are a couple of other DUH statements in the article also.… Read on:
U.S. researchers studying male herders in Kenya find men with more than one wife have lower testosterone levels than monogamously married men.
The study, published in Current Anthropology, also found monogamously married men have lower testosterone levels than single men, and married men who are considered aloof spouses and provide minimal parenting have much lower testosterone levels than single, unmarried men.
Researchers Peter Gray of the University of Nevada, Peter Ellison of Harvard University and Benjamin Campbell of Boston University, looked for links between male testosterone levels and marital status among modern-day herders in northern Kenya, known as the Ariaal.
When herd boys reach puberty, they are initiated, become warriors and accumulate livestock. They seldom marry and have children until age 30.
Less than 2 percent of the herders consider their wives a source of emotional support. Rather, they seem to value social bonds with male peers more than spousal bonds or familial bonds, the researchers said.
From NewsDaily.com
