Rafael Martins

Mira que es difícil grabar un trailer de cierta calidad con un poco de gracia: pues con Javapocalypse lo han logrado – y eso que solo se reirán a carcajadas los programadores y algunos grupos de geeks, porque no es para nada apto para todos los públicos. El guión es sencillo: el fin de Java ¡y del mundo! debido a que se ha detectado un problema de seguridad.

El asunto era promocionar JavaZone 2013, el encuentro para desarrolladores Java escandinavos – sin duda un grupo multitudinario… conocido por los renos de la zona y en sus casas a la hora de comer.

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Gente, que isso? Deixa o cara dançar…

KayLynn-Syrin's Tank Girl cosplay is just about the greatest bringing-to-life of one of my fave comic characters I've ever seen.

Tank Girl!

A great comic by artist Pablo Stanley. I’ve seen a few of these people around, both male and female, but fortunately for me, there’s none among my friends and family!

[Source: Stanley Colors - Comics and stuff by Pablo Stanley | Pablo Stanley (Facebook Fan Page)]

A few years ago I downloaded speed dating data from experiments conducted by Raymond Fisman, et al. (2005), which represents about 8,000 dates by 551 people. On each date, people scored each other on attractiveness, intelligence, ambition, and some other things, along with a yes or a no to seeing the other person again on a regular date.

Fisman, et al. noted gender differences in mate selection, such as: "Women put greater weight on the intelligence and the race of partner, while men respond more to physical attractiveness." And this: "Men do not value women's intelligence or ambition when it exceeds their own." Seemed like data worth checking out.

(Side note: Do people even speed date anymore?)

Three sections:

1. How the speed dating worked
2. What women and men want in a partner
3. Dating up the social ladder

How the speed dating rounds worked

In case you're unfamiliar with the speed dating process, here's how it works. There are two groups. Typically one group is women and the other is men. The point of it all is to match every woman with every man for a short period of time so that by the end, every one has gotten a chance to quickly know each other. The assumption is that you can learn a lot about a person in a short period of time.

In these speed dating sessions, the women stayed seated, and the men shifted each round. The pairs chatted for four minutes and then the men shifted again.

People scored each other on a 1-to-10 scale and indicated whether or not s/he wanted to date the other. So a few things can happen:

• Man wants to date woman, but woman is not interested.
• Woman wants to date man, but man is not interested.
• Both are not interested.
• Both are interested, so information is exchanged.

This also presented interesting dating styles. I won't go too in depth here, but it's fun to take a quick look.

Some people said yes to almost everyone, casting a wide net, whereas others were more stingy with their yeses. Some got a lot of yeses but only returned the favor a couple of times. Some people were really likable and ended up with a lot of mutual yeses.

For example, here are the one-way connections for the first dating session:

These are the mutual connections from the same session:

What women want vs. what men want

So what made one person more dateable than another? We can look at the pre-date surveys that asked others what they looked for in a partner and what they thought the opposite sex looked for. It was a 100-point scale, and participants were asked to divide those 100 points between attractiveness, intelligence, fun, sincerity, ambition, and shares the same interest.

The chart on the right compares the medians of what women said they want and what men said they want.

Women weighted the attributes more evenly than the men did, with intelligence on top and ambition on the bottom. In contrast, men weighted attractiveness more heavily. Ambition was also weighted lowest by the men but a few points lower, which matches the results in the paper.

There's nothing unexpected here. Although I thought sharing the same interest would be higher.

The contrast between what one group says it wants versus what the opposite thinks the other group wants is interesting. For example, women think men place attractiveness much higher in priority at the expense of intelligence and sincerity. And men think women actually weigh attractiveness more highly, also at the expense of intelligence and sincerity.

This is just what people said they wanted though. Is that what they actually wanted? As you might expect, the higher the ratings for all attributes, the higher the yes rate (the proportion of daters who said yes at the end of a round).

The trend is most clear with attractiveness and fun, which are easier to judge than the others in four minutes. The yes rates kind of level off for ambition and sincerity towards the higher ratings.

Look at intelligence though. There was a slight drop in yes rate when someone was rated with a 9 in intelligence by their peers. I suspect this was partially due to the relatively low number of people with this rating (only 26 of them), and the small group of high-intelligence people collectively had lower attractiveness ratings.

The trends are roughly the same when you split the results by gender. Although I would have expected women's yes rates towards men to continue upward given women ranked intelligence higher than attractiveness. Instead, that's how the men's yes rates towards women look.

Dating up (and down) the social ladder

We see this in sitcoms and movies all the time. There's a character who is less (traditionally) attractive interested in someone more attractive. His or her friend who is a genius in relationships launches into a speech about how said character has no chance because he or she can't date up the social ladder. Some might say s/he is undateable.

How does this "rule" pan out?

In the previous distributions, people got higher yes rates when they were rated more attractive by their partners. Flip this around. The more attractive someone was, the more selective they got. It's like the dating pool decreased for an individual the more attractive s/he was.

This doesn't stop people from trying though.

We only really see the change in selectivity with attractiveness (and kind of with fun) when you look at the full distributions, but we see a little more when we compare dating up versus dating down. As shown below, for every attribute, the median yes rate was higher when daters scored their partners higher than themselves. For example, the yes rate was much higher given a dater thought the partner was more fun than her or him.

Again, the difference is most obvious with attractiveness and fun, which makes sense because those are easier to judge in four minutes. You can see the wider spread between the points. However, there's still a spread for intelligence, sincerity, and ambition.

You can also see that the women were more selective than men. It's hard to say from the data alone if this is because the women were actually more choosy, because the men were less desirable, or a little bit of both. I'm guessing it's the women being more selective.

If we go back to the pre-date survey, the actual dating for men is similar to what they said was desirable in a partner. For women though, the speed date results are fairly different from their pre-survey responses. Again though, I suspect the difference comes from the challenge of judging a person in four minutes. Or not. If the former, speed dating seems better suited for men, and if the latter, well, I'm not sure what to do with that, so I'll let the ladies weigh in.

Back to the original findings in the paper. It looks like women do put slightly more weight on intelligence than men, and men put slightly more weight on attractiveness. However, the chart above seems to go against the results that men don't value women's intelligence or ambition when it exceeds their own. If it didn't matter, the yes rates for less ambitious and more ambitious would be near equal. I'll have to dig a little more into the discrepancy, but I suspect we might see something closer to the results when you control for the other variables (mainly attractiveness).

In any case, it's definitely not a straightforward decision.

Another way to look at it is that we don't see any yes rates of zero in the chart above. At the end of the day, even if you are less attractive, less intelligent, less fun, and less ambitious, just remember: There's still a chance.

f-l-e-u-r-d-e-l-y-s:

 Bruges‑Dog‑in‑Window

His name is Fidel, he’s a golden Labrador, and he lives at the Côté Canal bed and breakfast overlooking the main canal. But he’s better known as “that dog who’s in every person who goes to Bruges’ photo album”.

We know Bruges well, but not so well as to know the name of the B&B. Thanks to the OP. :)

girlgoesgrrr:

 

TODAY IN TURKEY

National Protest: Istanbul: 01-02JUNE2013

ACAB Worldwide

WAKE UP — SIGNAL BOOST

Most of us don’t grasp the variety of animals species that inhabit the Earth today, and some even get surprised as they find out there’s an animal they haven’t heard of before. But seriously now – out of 1,367,555^[1] identified non-insect animal species that live on Earth today, how do you expect to know every single one of them? To put it into perspective, take into account that this number represents only 1% of all animal species that ever lived!

Scientists themselves keep discovering new species every year and admit that modern science is not familiar with all existing animals. This leaves room to such unique and even bizarre discoveries and collected in this post! Inspired by reddit, we put together a selection of such unheard-of creatures as a Dumbo Octopus, Pink Fairy Armadillo, Star-Nosed Mole and many more. Warning – not all of them are super cute and fluffy!

Pink Fairy Armadillo

Image credits: reddit | wikipedia

Aye-aye

Image credits: animalsadda.com

The Maned Wolf

Image credits: imgur

Tufted Deer

Image credits: zoochat.com

See the rest of 22 Strange Animals You Probably Didn’t Know Exist

Women use compact mirrors in packed crowd to catch sight of the queen in London, June 1966.
Photograph by James P. Blair, National Geographic

Vi dados recentes de uma pesquisa sobre religiões e ateísmo e resolvi compartilhar com vocês:

Fontes: Pesquisas de Phil Zuckerman (2007), Richard Lynn (2008) e Elaine Howard Ecklund (2010), ONU, adherents.com, American ReligiousIdentification Survey, The Pew Research Center, Gallup Poll, The New York Times, Good, Nature, Live Science e Discovery Magazine.

Isso me lembra uma tirinha…

Vi dados recentes de uma pesquisa sobre religiões e ateísmo e resolvi compartilhar com vocês:

Fontes: Pesquisas de Phil Zuckerman (2007), Richard Lynn (2008) e Elaine Howard Ecklund (2010), ONU, adherents.com, American ReligiousIdentification Survey, The Pew Research Center, Gallup Poll, The New York Times, Good, Nature, Live Science e Discovery Magazine.

Isso me lembra uma tirinha…

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Happy Graduation, Seniors! Congratulations! What’s next?  Below is some sociologically-inspired, out-of-the-box advice on work, love, family, friendship, and the meaning of life.  For new grads from the two of us!

1. Don’t Worry About Making Your Dreams Come True

College graduates are often told: “follow your passion,” do “what you love,” what you were “meant to do,” or “make your dreams come true.”  Two-thirds think they’re going find a job that allows them to change the world, half within five years.  Yikes.

This sets young people up to fail. The truth is that the vast majority of us will not be employed in a job that is both our lifelong passion and a world-changer; that’s just not the way our global economy is. So it’s ok to set your sights just a tad below occupational ecstasy.  Just find a job that you like.  Use that job to help you have a full life with lots of good things and pleasure and helping others and stuff.  A great life is pretty good, even if it’s not perfect.

2. Make Friends

Americans put a lot of emphasis on finding Mr. or Ms. Right and getting married. We think this will bring us happiness.  In fact, however, both psychological well-being and health are more strongly related to friendship.  If you have good friends, you’ll be less likely to get the common cold, less likely to die from cancer, recover better from the loss of a spouse, and keep your mental acuity as you age.  You’ll also feel more capable of facing life’s challenges, be less likely to feed depressed or commit suicide, and be happier in old age.  Having happy friends increases your chance of being happy as much as an extra $145,500 a year does.  So, make friends!

3. Don’t Worry  about Being Single

Single people, especially women, are stigmatized in our society: we’re all familiar with the image of a sad, lonely woman eating ice cream with her cats in her pajamas on Saturday night. But about 45% of U.S. adults aren’t married and around 1 in 7 lives alone.

This might be you.  Research shows that young people’s expectations about their marital status (e.g., the desire to be married by 30 and have kids by 32) have little or no relationship to what actually happens to people.  So, go with the flow.

And, if you’re single, you’re in good company.  Single people spend more time with friends, volunteer more, and are more involved in their communities than married people. Never-married and divorced women are happier, on average, than married women. So, don’t buy into the myth of the miserable singleton.

4. Don’t Take Your Ideas about Gender and Marriage Too Seriously

If you do get married, be both principled and flexible.  Relationship satisfaction, financial security, and happy kids are more strongly related to the ability to adapt in the face of life’s challenges than any particular way of organizing families.  The most functional families are ones that can bend.  So partnering with someone who thinks that one partner should support their families and the other should take responsibility for the house and children is a recipe for disaster.  So is being equally rigid about non-traditional divisions of labor.  It’s okay to have ideas about how to organize your family – and, for the love of god, please talk about both your ideals and fallback positions on this – but your best bet for happiness is to be flexible.

5. Think Hard About Whether to Buy a House

Our current image of the American Dream revolves around homeownership, and buying a home is often taken for granted as a stage on the path to full-fledge adulthood. But the ideal of universal home ownership was born in the 1950s.  It’s a rather new idea.

With such a short history, it’s funny that people often insist that buying a house is a fool-proof investment and the best way to secure retirement.  In fact, buying a house may not be the best choice for you. The mortgage may be less than rent, but there are also taxes, insurance, and the increasingly common Home Owners Association (HOA) fees. You may someday sell the house for more than you bought it but, if you paid interest on a mortgage, you also paid far more than the sale price.  You have freedom from a landlord, but may discover your HOA is just as controlling, or worse.  And then there’s the headache: renting relieves you from the stress of being responsible for repairs. It also offers a freedom of movement that you might cherish.

So, think carefully about whether buying or renting is a better fit for your finances, lifestyle, and future goals. This New York Times rent vs. buy calculator is a good start.

6. Think Even Harder about Having Kids

One father had this to say about children: “They’re a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit.” In fact, having children correlates with both an increased sense of purpose in life and a long-lasting decrease in individual and marital happiness.  Having kids means spending a lot of your short life and limited income on one source of joy. It’s not a bad decision. But it’s also not the only good decision you can make. We want to think we can “have it all” but, in fact, it’s a zero sum game. You have only so much time and money and there are lots of ways to find satisfaction, pleasure, and meaning in this life.  Consider all your options.

Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. You can follow her on Twitter and Facebook.  Gwen Sharp is a professor of sociology at Nevada State College. You can follow her on Twitter.

Originally posted in 2013 and cross-posted at The Huffington Post and PolicyMic (with gifs!).

(View original at http://thesocietypages.org/socimages)

Often the true key to success is persistence and that holds true for this project which dumped the ROM from the current generation of Tamagotchi toys. If you’re a fan of learning the secrets built into consumer electronics — and you know we are — you’ll want to go back and watch the 24-minute lecture on Tamagotchi hacking which [Natalie Silvanovich] gave a 29C3 last year. She had made quite a bit of headway hacking the playable pods, but wasn’t able to get her hands on a full ROM dump from the General Plus chip on board processor. This update heralds her success and shares the details of how it was done.

As we learned form the video lecture it was a huge chore just to figure out what processor this uses. It turned out to be a 6502 core with a few other things built in. After prowling the manufacturer’s website she found example code for writing to Port A. She was then able to execute her own code which was designed to dump one byte of ROM at a time using the SPI protocol.

[Natalie] posted her code dump if you’re interested in digging through it. But as usual we think the journey is the most interesting part.

[Thanks Itay]