Marriage Gap Stats

Last night I got to flipping through a packet of readings for one of my college classes and found some of the information in one of them pretty interesting and worth sharing. So, for your information and reading pleasure:


Husbands with high-school dropout wives earned less than single men with comparable work and education histories. The chapter did not mention how much less.
Husbands with wives with just a high-school diploma earned 4.3 times as much as comparable single men.
Husbands with college educated wives earned almost 12 percent more than comparable single men.

The effects were shown whether or not they had children and whether or not the wives were employed, although I don't know whether the amount of the difference changed across those conditions. I also don't know what sort of difference the level of college education makes.

Unscientific Assumption

I've read in more than one place that women, overall, are more attractive than men. And that just seems like a pretty ridiculous claim to me. I, for one, find men much more attractive.

The thing is, at least one of these claims was made in a book explaining some evolutionary biology ideas to the general public. As in, they were trying to explain why women are more attractive than men. In that context, I would want the basic claims made - the things that they are trying to explain - to be supported by solid scientific data. But how would you measure that? Most men find women more attractive. Most women find men more attractive. What did they do, see whether people primarily attracted to men are more likely to find women attractive as well than people primarily attracted to women are to also find men attractive? If so, they really ought to mention that research in the book. And I know they didn't because I would have remembered that sort of study.

What Are They Thinking?

Not too long ago there was a popular video going around called "Should Christian women wear bikinis?" that talked about how the male brain reacts to seeing a scantily-clad woman. In it, the presenter read an excerpt from an article from Princeton and said, in part, "When the young men viewed the scantily-clad women, the part of the brain associated with tool use lit up...The researchers also discovered that when some of the men viewed these scantily-clad females, the men's medial prefrontal cortex (part of your brain) was deactivated... This is the region of the brain associated with analyzing a person's thoughts, intentions, and feelings.... The doctor remarked, 'It's as if they were reacting to these women as if they were not fully human.'"

I didn't read the research myself, but I'm assuming for now that it made it through peer review and was published in a reputable academic journal. And judging from the men of my acquaintance who shared it, it does fit with their personal experience, at least to some extent.

I would like to point out, by the way, that not every man's medial prefrontal cortex deactivated when looking at the pictures.

On Tuesday, a college friend of mine shared a link about a new law in Pakistan against throwing acid on women. As part of her response to a question I asked about it, she said, "Before this law, it was customary for a man to throw acid on a woman for an indiscretion like failing to bear a son, or out of rejection (if I can't have her, no one will want her because she'll be disfigured!), or through an inability to provide a handsome dowry to the husband from her parents, or for any reason that stems from revenge, or the need to dominate and control."

I can't help but wonder what the brain scans would show when those men looked at a woman. Because even a tool is generally better treated than that. And it's hard to imagine that somebody would throw acid at a person while really considering their thoughts, intentions, and feelings.

Timeless

The June issue of Scientific American came in the mail yesterday. So I brought it with me to read on the bus today.

One of the articles, about evidences of quantum mechanics showing up in macroscopic systems, predicts major changes in our understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe. The article is here. I think you'll be able to read it, but if not, you'll at least be able to get the main points off the "In Brief" sidebar.

But what I'm writing about is the last sentence of the fourth-to-last paragraph, which says "We must explain space and time as somehow emerging from fundamentally spaceless and timeless physics."

When I read that sentence, I didn't think of a complete change in how I see and understand the world. At least, not for more than a few seconds. What I really thought was that if reality is fundamentally timeless, then the idea of Heavenly Father seeing all times as now is a lot easier to comprehend.

Adjusting

One day last week when I was in a hurry to get to my bus on time, I grabbed the first book I saw with an interesting cover, skimming the blurb on the dust jacket to make sure it was fiction. (Yes, I judge books by the cover. So do you.) This book turned out to be LEFT Neglected by Lisa Genova, a story about a woman who develops left neglect after being in a car crash.

Left neglect is a rather fascinating disorder. When I read the dust jacket properly after leaving the house, I was actually a bit excited to realize it played a major role in the story. Basically, left neglect is your brain neglecting the left side, like you forget it's there. Everything physically works. You can see everything in front of you, but you aren't aware of anything to the left. Your limbs send sensation information. But your brain just ignores all that information. You can't consciously move your left arm or left leg, because your brain won't send them signals.

Anyway, when this lady's insurance won't pay for any more time in the rehabilitation center, she goes home. But while she was gone, her family made some changes. Because she didn't process what she saw on the left side, and she couldn't always move her left leg when walking or use her left arm to catch her, tripping became a real issue. So all the area rugs were removed from the house. Railings and grab bars were installed on the stairs and in the shower. They put brightly colored tape on the left sides of the door-frames in an attempt to get her attention, so she'd know they were there. And her mother moved in with them to help out. There were other changes, too, but you get the idea.

So I wondered what it would be like to come home and realize that your family has rearranged their home or their lives for you. Then I realized that my own family did to a certain extent when I was diagnosed with diabetes years ago. But at the time, I was just a little kid and didn't think much about how other people were affected, and now, everything just feels normal.

I also wondered how it would be to rearrange your home or life to accommodate new limitations for a loved one.

In my English class when I was a senior in high school, we once got into an argument about who had it harder during war - the boys, who were out fighting, or the girls at home, not knowing whether their men were alive or dead and not able to do anything about it. Well, while reading this book, I started wondering whether it would be harder to be the person who is living with the injuries and the knowledge of what her family is sacrificing for her or to be the family making the sacrifices and watching their daughter, wife, or mother suffer. Upon realizing that the men at war are actually seeing their friends die, I decided they have it harder. But I still don't know about this scenario.

Developing

A while ago I read an article in Scientific American talking about rates of cancer in developed countries (I believe they were referring to Europe and North America) versus developing countries (specifically mentioned were Egypt, Brazil, and Nigeria).

As I understand it, when people talk about developed countries, they mean countries that have achieved, or developed to, a certain point. Developing countries are progressing to that point. I'm not sure exactly what that cut-off is, and am not even sure that there is a real fixed marker. If anyone knows for sure where the cutoff is, feel free to enlighten me.

But when I read the article, the terms seemed, briefly, to be saying that the developing countries are still climbing and growing and achieving new things. Developed countries, however, are done and are just stagnating. I know that isn't what was meant. And that isn't actually the case. But the thought did grab hold of me for about one second.

High on the Spectrum

I recently read that some people say that shyness could be considered a very mild form of Asperger's. If this is the case, I definitely place on the Autistic Spectrum.

Boys are significantly more likely than girls to be diagnosed with an autistic spectrum disorder. When I think about shyness, however, I don't really associate it more with one sex than the other. But I've seen no data about shyness rates and wonder if anybody has ever studied that. I'd guess that someone has, but I don't know.

But the actual shyness rates between boys and girls wouldn't necessarily make any sort of case for or against general shyness being on the spectrum. But if a genetic link between autism and shyness were found, that could provide a valid argument. Autism is a genetically complex disorder- or, more accurately, group of disorders- so such a link could exist.

Of course, even if it turns out that shyness does have some sort of relationship to autism, it is not a psychiatric disorder. Some people say that Asperger's isn't a disorder either, but I don't really want to get into that- just acknowledging and moving on. Anyway, what I was taught is that in order to be diagnosed clinically, there needs to be a serious disruption in at least three areas of life. This particular criterion was brought up in a child psych class and the cutoff point may be different for adults, but it gets the point across. Although shyness can be a limitation, it generally is not serious enough to be considered a real disruption. As an example from a different set of behaviors, a tic is not a psychiatric disorder. But Tourette's is. It disrupts all sorts of aspects of a person's life.

More people are diagnosed with ASD than used to be. Some people think this increase is related to chemicals in vaccinations. An explanation more well accepted within the scientific community is that the symptoms are more recognized. But if the increase did come because of vaccinations, and shyness is related to autism, would that lead to higher rates of shyness these days?

I have also heard that a gluten-free, casein-free diet can reduce ASD symptoms. So if I change my diet, can I make all my shyness and social awkwardness go away?

Eternal Evolution

I've read a lot of books explaining why evolution has brought humans to be the way we are, both behaviorally and anatomically. Why young men take crazy risks and why we have chins. And there are some interesting theories out there. But while I find it interesting to read about evolutionary benefits to the shape and position of our nose, or why our brow ridge got smaller, I always figured that however we got this way, we look the way we do because that is how we are eternally- the whole "Let us create man in our image" thing.

But the other day I started wondering what made people in this form in the eternal realm. As I understand it, we were created by our Father, which places some sort of timeline as to who was created first. So, have people evolved at all, or was the first in form like we are? Or was there even a first? It doesn't make sense for there not to have been, but maybe that's a limitation of my mortal mind.