Show HN: Create a papercraft book from any ISBN – experiment with React and Node - <AUTHOR> http://origamihub.com

<comment><USER2> This strikes me as though it should be an art piece underlining the tragedy of what the Kindle and all DRM-encumbered digital media has taken from us.

When a friend or visitor walks up to a real bookshelf in your home and takes interest in one of your books, they can thumb through it and even borrow it for themselves.

With these, it is a farce, a disappointment, an insult. A real bookshelf says "I read these and you can too!" A bookshelf of papercraft books says "I licensed these for myself and due to DRM and copyright all I can share is the jacket."

Bookshelves full of papercraft books mock the beauty of bookshelves full of real books.

<comment><USER3> You can share some kindle books: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=2...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200549320)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Couldn't a digital representation meant for a PC/TV work equally well? You could have your software create a graphical representation of the books on a bookshelf, and enable the user to make it into a screensaver, or something they could put on a TV. Seems like it would be at least an interesting addition to your service. Obviously not everyone can dedicate a TV to displaying their collection of books, but the results can be neat for those who can... [http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5170/5263049453_a91bf99e3e.jp...](http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5170/5263049453_a91bf99e3e.jpg) (video columns in the lobby of the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I half considered approaching Amazon with this for an April Fools gimmick but I thought I'd just get lost in some bureaucracy there.

Always nice to get some eyeballs! I didn't expect any interest in this really - as it's ultimately completely pointless!

I built it because I'm on a mission to polish up my Javascript[0] and get to grips with React and Node. And I have to say, it's been a pleasure. I'm astounded that the server for this (70 concurrent users) was just install node and hit _screen -r / node server_.

[0] [http://alexmuir.com/catchup-mode](http://alexmuir.com/catchup-mode)

<comment><USER5> >now I'm setting off on an investigation of Grunt, Gulp, Live Reload and Yeoman.

Don't. Just learn webpack and call it a day.

<comment><USER6> I still haven't found a beginner's (someone used to working with Gulp / Grunt) intro to Webpack :(

Any recommendations?

<comment><USER5> I am not sure. I just followed their docs[1] which are really good, IMO.

1\. [http://webpack.github.io/docs/](http://webpack.github.io/docs/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice idea.

The social aspect of showing a visitor one's bookshelf is definitely getting lost. Even when actively wanting to share reading thoughts or recommandation with someone, it can be awkward to hand over a kindle or iPad with every single book downloaded when some of them touch very private subjects or controversial matters.

As an aside, there is less and less things worth printing out. Papercraft seems to be the best use of a printer nowadays.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is true. I downloaded The Game onto my kindle to see what people were talking about and then lent it to my girlfriend which created some questions.

It's a silly project (almost arty in its pointlessness). I can't remember why I thought of it, but I liked the simplicity of pulling combining easily available item dimensions and cover images.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Found this to be pretty fun, and it reminds me of the "Faux" technology props they use in furniture stores or staged houses to make it appear "lived in" without risking high tech stuff. My favorite was a fake "macbook" like laptop with a printed Windows XP screen as its display. Sadly it seems the company that made it, Proptronics, may be out of business [1]

On a related note, the Google book scanning project cut up a lot of books by cutting the spine off. In Building 45 there used to be some fake bookcases with the spines glued on to look like all those books were on the shelf. Kind of made me sad, sort of like a book crypt.

[1] [http://www.theacme.com/?name=PROPTRONICS&product=1030206311](http://www.theacme.com/?name=PROPTRONICS&product=1030206311)

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't own a Kindle so I don't know if this is possible, but it would be fun if you can give your Kindle username (does that exist?) or any kind of API Key and it generates all your books on a ZIP file with PDF files so you can print your entire virtual book collection :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great idea. Looks like scraping a Kindle library[0] is achievable. I might do something more with it next weekend.

[0] [https://github.com/speric/kindle- highlights](https://github.com/speric/kindle-highlights)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Searching by name seems to work fine, but none of the ISBN's I entered returned any results.

For example I tried: 978-0201485677 9780201485677 0201485672 No Results were displayed, but typing in the title Refactoring worked just fine. This was in Chrome and Firefox on my laptop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Fixed! (uuuugh XML)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What about a double sided version where the inside contains something of value? Perhaps a called out spot for a flash drive containing the book, or a QR code to the book/amazon page/etc, or perhaps a little "guest log" so people could open it up and rate the book? Would be an interesting experiment/art thing

In fact, if you did what the others down below suggested (the Amazon Kindle scraper) then the inside could automatically contain when you purchased the book which would be kind of cool

</comment><comment><USER12> I love this idea. I love it so much. I've been lamenting the notion that my friends can browse my "real" library on my bookshelf, but nobody can browse my e-book library. I've read hundreds of books on my Kindle, and there's no real way for people visiting my place to casually browse and say "This looks interesting; is it any good?"

I love it.

</comment><comment><USER13> The CSS for the vertical text on the binding does not seem to work in Safari.

Example screenshot with chrome on the bottom: [http://puu.sh/gLdy2.png](http://puu.sh/gLdy2.png)

<comment><USER14> Safari is the last holdout for prefixing the CSS3 transform properties. [http://caniuse.com/#search=transform](http://caniuse.com/#search=transform)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You could integrate with services like [http://www.fedex.com/us/office/cloud- printing.html](http://www.fedex.com/us/office/cloud-printing.html).

</comment><comment><USER16> No side jacket?

It'd be interesting to see a project like this that uses just the side jackets with the titles to create a "bookshelf poster" that can be laid out wallpaper style.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like that idea. Sadly no-one seems to have a database of images of the spines of books. All I'm doing at the moment is pulling the color at (x:5,y:5) from the cover image and using that for the spine. It's not exact but good enough. I think pick either white or black text depending on the color saturation. It's OK in this situation but for generating a poster it'd need to be a lot more refined.

<comment><USER17> BitLit is a company that allows you to upload a "shelfie" of your books and they will recognise the books from their spines. So don't give up hope on that image database, it must exist. Nice work, looks like an interesting project.

[http://www.bitlit.com/how-it-works/](http://www.bitlit.com/how-it-works/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Doesn't load in Kenya. Had to go through [http://teleport.to](http://teleport.to)

<comment><AUTHOR> I LOVE Kenya so it's nothing personal!! My mum grew up in Mombasa and Nairobi. The site is hosted on Digital Ocean in NY - I've just enabled Cloudflare so hopefully that might sort things out. Sorry, but thanks for letting me know.

<comment><USER18> No worries :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Or you could host all your books on your home web server with an ad on your empty bookshelf or above your TV?

</comment><comment><USER20> The Encyclopedia Britannica is fun: 9781593392925

<comment><USER21> If by fun you mean doesn't work properly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does not work well on an Android phone.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, sorry - It should have a popup message for phones saying it probably doesn't work. I've made zero effort to get it working on phones since you can't print from them anyway. It's just a bit of playfun really!

<comment><USER23> I frequently print from my iPhone and iPad :)

That being said I definitely saw the pop-up in Safari on iOS 8.2. I appreciate the warning, would've got frustrated without it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's very annoying when stuff doesn't work on a phone. I'll be honest - I didn't actually expect anyone to print a book. I don't even own a printer so I haven't tested it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this project open source? I didn't see it in github</comment>


Dave Chappelle Uses Technology to Keep People Off Their Phones at His Shows - <AUTHOR> http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2015/12/dave-chappelle-yondr-phone-free-zone?utm_campaign=complexmag&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&sr_share=facebook <comment><USER2> The worst experience I've had with people using their phones during a performance was during a Broadway musical. The lady a seat in front of me to the left thought it would be a good idea to text in the dark performance hall with her phone.

She was a beacon of distraction and a lot of audience members were missing key parts of the show and it led to much distress.

I'd rather people be responsible and do this act on their own instead of having to use a technology like this. I guess I'm of the idea that if we don't give the opportunity for people to be responsible then they will not develop the ability.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like this would get backlash from audience members quickly and eventually filter who goes to your shows. Y

ou're practically asking them to voluntarily allow them to detain your phone.

I'd also hate to see how the audience reacts if the case ever fails to unlock.

And what about Apple Watches and Smart Watches, it will eventually be difficult to police.

'I might need it in case the sitter calls' or 'I need it for emergencies'

<comment><USER4> I'd also be worried about a situation with an active shooter which is becoming all too-common. That said I'd imagine you could cut open the case or possibly rip it open in that situation but who wants to have to do that when they need to call 911. I'm not in an environment where this is really a concern (then again who thinks they are before it happens) but I still don't let my phone get out of reach when I'm not home.

<comment><USER5> active shooter is not "becoming all too-common" and it's a really silly thing to be so concerned about. FBI found 160 incidents of active shooters between 2000-2013 with total of 1,043 casualties (486 deaths and 556 wounded).

Contrast that with other causes of mortality which in one year kill many more: motor vehicle accidents 35,369; peptic ulcers 2,988; gallbladder disorders 3,377; renal failure 46,425

Accidental poisoning killed 8,251 people between the ages of 25-34 in 2013 alone. Stop worrying about active shooters.

[https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/september/fbi- releases...](https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2014/september/fbi-releases- study-on-active-shooter-incidents/pdfs/a-study-of-active-shooter-incidents-in- the-u.s.-between-2000-and-2013) [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


Chrome 57 – WebAssembly enabled - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/03/nic57 <comment><USER2> There's a Unity demo on the WebAssembly site if you want to see if it's enabled in your browser. Just tried it on Chrome beta and it worked. MS Edge 13 did the asm.js fallback.

[http://webassembly.org/demo/](http://webassembly.org/demo/)

Note : The demo is pretty slow to initialize

<comment><USER3> There's also Mozilla's WASM demo, which is much more graphically impressive (though probably not quite as fun): [https://s3.amazonaws.com/mozilla- games/ZenGarden/EpicZenGard...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/mozilla- games/ZenGarden/EpicZenGarden.html)

I had it working in Chrome Canary yesterday. Can't seem to get it to work on Chrome 57 now though, even though in theory it supports WASM and WebGL 2.

<comment><AUTHOR> It crashes for me with Chrome stable 57

<comment><USER2> Worked for me on Chrome 57 beta.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, works fine on Canary as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And, as always, I just added Chrome 57 to Browserling. You can try this new version at this URL without installing or updating it:

[https://www.browserling.com/chrome/57/news.ycombinator.com](https://www.browserling.com/chrome/57/news.ycombinator.com)

I'm adding more virtual machines right now to let more people try it without interruption.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't see any mention of WebAssembly in this post besides one comment.

<comment><USER6> Ok, we changed the above title from "Chrome 57 – WebAssembly enabled" to what the page says.

<comment><AUTHOR> I added "WebAssembly enabled" because I thought it would be of the most interest to HN. It is indeed enabled in Chrome 57 stable.

<comment><USER7> Are you from the Chrome team? Or how do you know it's enabled? The above demo doesn't work for me because it says I don't have WebGL enabled - yet I do. It may be some other setting messing it up.

It seems strange that Google would not even mention such a feature being enabled, though.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


JSFiddle Updates - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/jsfiddle-updates/the-lifting-cb3c9f216c2f#.msjzxdzb1 <comment><USER2> One of the things that bugs me about JSFiddle is that I can't do console.log and have it show up somewhere other than my console. Would be nice if I could replace the HTML/CSS windows with a JS console for JS-only development.

I've just started to use Node interactive mode instead, which works fine but doesn't let me side load scripts easily.

<comment><USER3> This might be what you're looking for: [http://jsconsole.com/](http://jsconsole.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> JSFiddle is much more slower than jsbin.com

Another thing is that jsbin supports live-reload editing of html & css. For jsfiddle I have to hit RUN every time I edit HTML / CSS.

Long time ago, when I was accumulating my stack overflow reputation, I used to do demos with jsfiddle. Back then I remembered how I switched to jsbin, which was so much faster and has a console.log panel which makes it even superior ( not to mention it's open source ).

Anyway jsfiddle has it's place in the history and kudos for the team that supports it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been really digging [http://codepen.io](http://codepen.io) but I'll give jsfiddle another shot next time I'm in the need for a scratchpad.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'll have to say I'm not really a fan. I liked the higher contrast better, it's easier to read monospaced font on a darker background.

At least give people a choice of light vs. dark?

</comment><comment><USER7> Did anyone notice they changed their branding too?

I remember it spelled jsFiddle

It seems they changed it to JSFiddle

<comment><USER8> The article uses jsFiddle while the legal disclaimer on JSFiddle reads JSFiddle. The announcement of "The Lifting" uses JSFiddle. Meanwhile, the documentation can't make up its mind:

        jsFiddle Documentation

        To file a bug in JSFiddle

Though it mostly uses jsFiddle.

/begin edit

The Medium post uses JSFiddle: [https://medium.com/jsfiddle-updates/the- lifting-cb3c9f216c2f...](https://medium.com/jsfiddle-updates/the-lifting- cb3c9f216c2f#.zaz3dlqyg)

I think it's safe to assume it has been changed to JSFiddle.

/end edit

More on topic: I'll have to see if there was anything new besides a facelift. Personally using Codepen atm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Url changed from [http://www.whatpixel.com/jsfiddle- redesign-2015/](http://www.whatpixel.com/jsfiddle-redesign-2015/), which points to this.</comment>


Neuroscientist found there are 7 factors that can help you change anyone's mind - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.de/how-to-be-more-persuasive-according-to-neuroscience-2018-10 <comment><USER2> I actually gave a talk about automating influence on social media with what effectively amounted to chatbots, as a part of the 2016 election. Many of these factors were used, but also a few other interesting elements this article didn't mention:

1\. Geographic locales have linguistic norms that silently help in-group association. Adjusting rhetoric to these terms make people more pliable.

2\. Context-aware sentiment is more impactful than general sentiment analysis. Someone may not have been a Trump supporter, but they didn't like Hillary. This became another fulcrum.

3\. Social leaders had the biggest impact, but social leaders can be made. This was leveraging a thought experiment conducted by DARPA, published in a paper titled, "Containment Control for a Social Network with State-Dependent Connectivity" ([https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf))

These and a few other factors lead to my prediction of polling trajectories delivering a win for Trump in 2016 (the lecture was in August).

<comment><USER3> Is your talk online anywhere? I'm in the middle of LikeWar and it's the first I've really dug into mass influence/propaganda. It's infinitely interesting

<comment><USER2> It is, but the sound is _bad_: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iIIemMC4hrk](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iIIemMC4hrk)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: My apartment's management is forcing me to watch Dish TV, what do I do? - <AUTHOR> As per the mail I got, apartment management has tied up with Dish TV and I have to cancel my Centurylink internet and subscribe to dishtv cable & internet. They stated this as cost of living. I do not want cable,just internet. But I don't have a choice ?<p>Here is the pdf I got in my mail today.
https://db.tt/eh7OgCXv <comment><USER2> see if you can use this as leverage to get out of your lease.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the place, except this new policy.</comment></comment>


How Aristotle Created the Computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/518697/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Obviously Aristotle did no such thing.

However, he laid the foundation for logic, and founded sciences as specialized branches of knowledge with their specific basic principles and methods. People who attack him tend to dwell on concrete-bound mistakes while ignoring the methods he advocated; remember, errare humanum est. The re-discovery of his thoughts, and the return to reason, are the roots of the Renaissance. The remnants of his writings, more than anything else, fathered our world, via the Age of Enlightenment.

As for the future, imagine a Second Renaissance, followed by a Second Enlightenment!</comment>


Apache Drill: Schema-free SQL Query Engine for Hadoop and NoSQL - <AUTHOR> http://drill.apache.org/

<comment><USER2> The Hadoop community has been making huge strides on integrating with existing technologies and developers thanks to the various SQL-like query engines.

Based on the home page it appears that Drill currently supports queries on Hadoop, but has not yet started supporting non-Hadoop DBs.

I'm interested to see how well Drill integrates with existing BI tools vs. Impala, and how well it queries non-Hadoop data stores vs. Presto.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends what you mean by layout. If you add/remove/change the fields in the records, Drill can handle that. It can also handle a situation where you move from one format (say JSON) to another format (Parquet) and have mixed formats in a directory.

Drill is described as schema-free, but the data doesn't have to lack schema. Some data (Parquet, Avro) has schema, while some data (JSON, HBase, MongoDB) doesn't (ie, each record could have different fields). Drill is designed to allow queries on any data. Also, Drill leverages the structure that's embedded in the data without requiring IT to redundantly define schemas in a centralized schema repository. In other words, if there's a schema embedded in the Parquet file, why require the user to then go and maintain the same schema, explicitly, in Hive metastore?

</comment><comment><USER4> What if you change the layout of your files? There's a very thin line separating schema and schema-less databases.

<comment><USER5> You are correct that schema-less systems can still require maintenance. However a schema-less system like Drill allows users of the data like business analysts to write interactive queries as soon as they bring new files into HDFS. Surely if you were using Drill to query data programmatically, you would want to make sure only the technical staff could modify the data during the dev process, and likely use an automated process to incorporate data as it comes in. However, this is no different than managing appropriate permissions on a traditional database.

<comment><USER4> Skipping the schema configuration step only saves a few minutes but if you are sloppy schema-less may hurt you big time (hidden bugs, etc.).

<comment><USER3> I think there's a tradeoff here. It's like MongoDB - hundreds of thousands downloads per month because it enables people to build and deploy applications faster. For many cases a relational database is still better though.

The nice attribute of Drill is that it works on schema-less data as well as data with strong schemas. The user can make the tradeoff between agility and 'safety'.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Shoov – Gizra's testing toolkit for visual and live sites monitoring - <AUTHOR> http://shoov.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> Shoov has currently two complimenting tools:

* Visual monitor - Using webdriverCSS upon regression, images are pushed to Shoov. If the regression image is in fact the correct one (i.e. a deliberate change) the image can be downloaded or used to create a pull request on GitHub.

* Live monitor - Used to trigger functional tests with your preferred framework (Behat, CasperJs, etc'), or to run the visual monitor tests periodically.

The open source stack is consisted of:

* Drupal in the backend (a.k.a "Headless Drupal") as a REStufl server

* Angular in the front (possibly replaced with aurelia.io in the near future)

* Docker containers

* NodeJs servers

* Yeoman generator to easily scaffold visual monitor tests

[https://github.com/shoov/](https://github.com/shoov/)</comment>


Moving to Docker (part 1 of 3) - <AUTHOR> http://cocoahunter.com/2015/01/23/docker-1/

<comment><USER2> It seems like he may have over complicated things in part 2 (Setting up a private Docker registry). I've never set one up myself, but it seems like you'd be able to use a reverse proxy and basic auth on nginx or apache, avoiding all of the tweaking with the boot2docker VM and ssh tunneling.</comment>


Don't dumb girls down - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/dont-dumb-girls-down-20110829-1jh86.html <comment><USER4> To all the people in this thread who seem so absolutely sure that the gender differences are strictly biological, do you fancy telling us what exactly makes you so sure? Last time I checked there was no evidence to support this idea.

Obviously there are easily observed physiological differences in brain structure and in the endocrine system etc, however it is a _massive_ leap to go from that to asserting that observed differences in behaviour are down to this rather than down to societal factors.

Separating nature from nurture is notoriously difficult, and in a community which endlessly holds P=NP to be an open question, it is absolutely _laughable_ to assume that these biological differences map one to one onto the observed behavioural differences, when there is such a huge and obvious confounding factor looming over everything.

We cannot all sit around waiting for six sigmas out of CERN before we can say we've found the higgs, and then just jump merrily onto simplistic biological arguments which happen to conveniently favour our social/political/economic hegemony.

<comment><USER5> > our social/political/economic hegemony.

Hm, sorry, what hegemony are you talking about?

I always wonder why people who go all excited about gender issues can't accept that women are not men and do not have to be like men? Your 'hegemony' (I assume you speak the well known thesis about male-dominated society) may not actually exist, and the 5 year old's desire to look attractive may not be bad at at all.

Imagine, there are two dimentions to the world. One is manifesting itself in social power structures, money, status, smart jobs, Nobel awards etc.

The other is completely different and involves sense of belonging, security, plans about rising children and actual time to spend with children, emotional connection with friends, caring, feeling etc.

It just could be that most of women are not interested in the masculine dimension of this life. Heck, I dare say they may not even be particularly fit for the struggle/rat race due to their biology, exceptions notwithstanding. But they are powerful masters of another, parallel universe, which is always here with us, and where majority of men just not quite make it.

I think of many girls/women I've known in life who absolutely hate to spend their precious time on stupid things like going to work, making sure your last project is a success, competing, 'achieving' in the eyes of others etc. This distracts them from their sacred passion in life -- that is to rise a child, to shape the child's mind and soul and to protect him/her. And protection means having a secure, clean and comfortable house. And yes, that means having a strong competitive man next the them who would provide for all of that. Basically, that means a family.

(The idea of the family seems to have been discredited both by the idiotic religious right and no less idiotic crusading left, but a strong family has a clear evolutionary biological advantage. It ensures the partners reproduce and their children get competitive advantage while growing in a happy/secure place. On the other hand, a lone over-achiever may as well become the richest man in the cemetery).

A young girl is conditioned to think about her looks because this will help her later to chose her mate and to create her family. And yes, she will be chosen for the large part because of their biological traits (beauty). And that's not a bit shameful or reproachable.

Thankfully, beauty is not the only criteria, so chill, you gender activists and spare me the flaming. Of course not only looks matter in life, and child beauty contests are a horrible thing. But still, it is normal for the girls to try to look beautiful, just as it is normal for the boys to try to be strong.

<comment><USER6> The point of gender issues isn't to say women shouldn't care about beauty, child care, or or emotional connections. The point is that women can choose to care about the realms of life you described as "masculine"- jobs, academic accomplishments, financial independence.

The problem with gender issues reveals itself when the activities and traits you traditionally classified by gender are enforced on individuals of that gender. When a young woman's boss passes her over for promotion because she is around the age many women decide to bear children. When a young man is mocked and humiliated for doing ballet. When a woman is declared selfish because she chose her career over staying home with children.

There are women who don't like children, and have no desire to raise one. There are men who would rather stay home and cook, clean, and raise children than have a "smart job".

Treating traits as "feminine" and "masculine", which is what happens when young boys are encouraged to look at cars and young girls are told to be pretty, sends the societal message to young girls that she cannot have a smart job, academic achievements and so forth because women don't do those things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was musing on this the other day (beware; anecdote alert!). I went out for some drinks with a friend of mine from a long time ago - he is certainly not the sharpest of individuals, but a laugh and good fun in small doses (even if a lot of the jokes include farts :S).

For some reason he is also constantly surrounded by very attractive women. I've seen him out and about before and thought "I'd like to have some of that!". But my first impression when we were hanging out was that all these girls shared two things in common - good looks and zero intelligence. Most of the fart jokes came from them.

Which was a bit of a shock!

It took me a while to figure out that most of them weren't actually thick. I managed to have a conversation with one of them later on; and found she was a psychology graduate (one of my favourite pet interests :)), had even published a research paper on her work. Which was just confusing... there was this smart good looking girl, and she was hanging around acting thick.

Then I worked it out... they were acting as they were expected to (either by our perception or theirs) on a night out; shove on the lipstick, revert to street talk, laugh at fart jokes and play dumb around the men. The psychologist actually even said this about her career (paraphrasing): "oh.. well I never really tell people that, it puts them off".

Which is just a fucking sad reflection on society.

<comment><USER8> _Then I worked it out... they were acting as they were expected to (either by our perception or theirs) on a night out; shove on the lipstick, revert to street talk, laugh at fart jokes and play dumb around the men._

I'm think, like me, you're British :-) So you probably know that British _men_ generally go out and do exactly the same thing (minus the lipstick). The average British bloke on a night out is, unless he's on the pull, as dumb as a rock, generally rat-arsed and talking total bollocks with his mates ;-)

Dumbing down on a night out isn't a gender-based pursuit.

<comment><USER7> Yes, you're dead right there... I guess we are all lying to each other.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great, another whiny article about the poor, maligned girls doomed to a future of breast enhancement and cellulite cream thanks to misogny.

The article is a troll, here to elicit an emotional response that will sell a book.

Enter the strawman: "In my book, Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World, I reveal that 15 to 18 per cent of under-12 girls in the United States now wear mascara, eyeliner and lipstick regularly; eating disorders are up, and self-esteem is down; and 25 per cent of young American women would rather win America's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize. Even bright, successful, university-educated women say they'd rather be hot than smart. A Miami mother recently died from cosmetic surgery, leaving behind two teenagers."

Would the hysterical premise of the article hold true if you substituted common male gripes or practices? What percentage of boys aspire to be basketball or baseball players instead of whatever profession is deemed acceptable? How many young men would rather be football heroes than academics? How many would rather win a NASCAR race than win the Nobel Prize? Did a Miami father die of a heart attack because he was playing basketball at 45 in 100 degree heat?

It's easy and convenient to beat up strawmen and find a sexist boogeyman behind every perceived problem. Just don't lose sight of the fact that when you do that, you are dumbing things down.

<comment><USER10> This is worth thinking over.

I think a lot of boys do aspire the adrenaline rush professions. But if they don't end up being one, do they now resign from their whole lives and just go saying the social persuasions to be such, destroyed their whole lives?

There is always going to be a social persuasion for nearly everything. They way we eat, dress, talk nearly anything people can see, people can pass a comment on. And that becomes a mass opinion and taken to be the established truth later.

Somehow I find it difficult to understand why women consider themselves so special in this regard. Why do we end up comparing representation of women and men in every industry is beyond my understanding.

In the name of diversity and women's empowerment, why should we expect a guy to work late in the night, come on weekends, push hard deadlines and a girl is given all options to leave early? why is inefficiency assumed to be OK and acceptable just to accommodate them? If a girl feels need to emphasize her equality, can't it be done by performing? Why do rules have to be bent, made lot more easier?

Its like a foot ball game, where you remove away the defenders so that they can score a easily. This sort of defeats the very whole purpose of empowerment.

 _Empowerment is to give strength to something so that it can compete with challenges as they are, not remove away the challenges so that can be easily met._

<comment><USER11> "why should we expect a guy to work late in the night, come on weekends, push hard deadlines and a girl is given all options to leave early?"

Well, to put it drastically: biologically men are almost worthless. They can not produce babies. Hence women can make higher demands. Men have to bid for women (to carry their children) offering as much "worth" as they can. Nobody has to bid for men, because men are easily replaceable. Especially now that physical strength is not so important for survival anymore (we have guns).

In many species the female actually eats the male after sex for a nice protein boost. That is how useful men are.

<comment><USER12> The evidence regarding fatherless homes is definitely on your side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of a story that I wish I could find again. It was in the Reader's Digest Young Peoples' Annual from sometime in the 60s. I read it in the 90s, so some of the advice ("don't go dutch too often") was truly perplexing, but this particular story was about a girl who played baseball.

She always sat and watched the boys play baseball. One boy in particular caught her eye. He asked if she wanted to play and she jumped at the chance. She wanted to impress him, so she pitched the ball hard and fast. With each player she struck out, he seemed less and less happy. Finally, it came her turn to bat. By this point, he was hardly paying attention to her at all. She swung out. "Oops", she said, "I guess I'm not doing it right". His eyes perked up and he came over to talk to her. "You should hold the bat like this", he said, "and don't swing so hard". She smiled at him. She could bat just fine, of course, but it's important to have priorities.

I wish I had a copy because I'd love to read it again. I suspect that the consequences of treating girls like pretty dolls, rather than the explorers, creators and leaders that they can be, will be felt for a while still; but I hope a few decades from now I get to read this article again and laugh at how things have changed.

<comment><USER14> Human biology is not that quick to change. It demonstrates a large amount of hubris to even think it should be. Women marry up and across dominance hierarchies. Artificially boosting the career success of women just causes misery on the long run for men and for society.

I thought that the girl in your story was very smart, and even if people had treated her like a pretty doll for her entire life she would still be the same. Intelligent, critical and capable.

<comment><USER15> >Human biology is not that quick to change.

No, but a lot of things with regards to our current expected behaviour of genders is in fact social, not biological. A lot of 18th century male behaviour would today be regarded as effeminate. Red was once the color of choice for baby boys, and blue for girls.

>Artificially boosting the career success of women just causes misery on the long run for men

Hang on, did anyone propose affirmative action here or something? All the blog talked about was trying to praise girls for their smarts rather than their looks. If this is enough to cause misery for you, I think you have self-esteem issues. (Edit: Oops, that was needlessly confrontational and personal. Apologies for last sentence.)

>I thought that the girl in your story was very smart, and even if people had treated her like a pretty doll for her entire life she would still be the same. Intelligent, critical and capable.

Perhaps, but as mentioned in the article, some girls as young as 5 think they are "too fat" and try to go on a diet. It is clearly an issue for some.

<comment><USER10> _Hang on, did anyone propose affirmative action here or something? All the blog talked about was trying to praise girls for their smarts rather than their looks. If this is enough to cause misery for you, I think you have self- esteem issues._

Sorry the blog talked silently about a lot of things, which squarely put the blame on people for a lot of mistakes which girls make personally.

I appreciate my nephew all the time when he wins a running race or plays cricket well. But that is never taken as something that can be used to be bad at academics nor does not speaking about he being good at studies permanently deter him from being good at studies.

If girls aren't good looking, how does that stop them from picking up a book and studying hard for an entrance exam. Or burning the midnight oil meeting a tough deadline? None of that has anything to do with beauty. That's something which has to come from within. Willingness to work hard and go to tough times is what brings success and that is irrespective of gender.

Somehow I find it difficult to accept that argument that saying somebody that they look good suddenly becomes the reason to be never good at anything else ever after.

<comment><USER16> It's not about the attribute itself, but affirmation along that attribute.

It's the same conundrum facing parents of gifted kids, praising innate ability vs. hard work backfires in a spectacular way sooner or later and the child stops taking risks because they are afraid of being dumb.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I often read such articles from women, but never from men. After looking deeply at myself and how the world around me acts, I feel that it is really true: Women ARE evaluated mostly by their looks. Women who look good, wear good clothes, have a good makeup, will get what they want much more easily then others. To some degree that is also true for men. It is just how the world IS. So instead of teaching girls about the value of other things, don't we do them a favour, teaching them to care about good looks? Does caring about good looks exclude caring about smartness and education? Is my observation totally wrong?

<comment><USER18> Let's put it another way - if you teach a girl that her good looks are super super important, and she's bombarded with adverts telling her ways to improve, and images of people on TV that are portrayed vastly superior to her physically, then she is being set up to feel that no matter what she does, she's never good enough. Whilst us boys can "hit the gym" or "hit the books" and our manliness and success can exude, a girl has to chase beauty products, botox, and boob jobs in order to progress with what she's been born with. Or perhaps become anorexic to be as thin as the models and celebrities that form the vast majority of what women are told to aspire to.

This is an awful, awful system. Men are valued on something that is in many respects healthy - physical fitness, ambition, mental progress. Whereas girls are valued on something superficial and damaging - thinness, "beauty". This is what the "beauty" industry does - capitalise on this desire like a shark and not only provide ways for girls to improve their looks, but actively perpetrate the myth that women need to look younger or slimmer or have 100% perfect skin. The beauty industry is a fucking disease.

<comment><USER10> C'mmon.

I am thin, I can't call myself super good looking either. I am not very extrovert and not too much into sports.

But I can't use this as a reason to be bad at other things. Present ability, hygiene , looking good, neat and clean matter to both the genders. But if a person is not very attractive by natural look, that is no reason to _not perform well in life by personal choice_. That is not a reason, not to work hard, not to try, not to give your full.

Blaming things apart from oneself only goes so far. And doesn't help anybody.

Just because I sucked at sports, I can't use the same reason to be bad at programming.

<comment><USER19> There is is a _substantial_ difference.

Society's sense of your worth, and as a result your sense of self-worth is not tied into those physical characteristics.

This isn't a matter of how hard someone tries at life, this is a question on what basis society judges individuals by (and i should note, this is an emergent equilibrium. It's nudged this way and that, but now that it's driven by financial interests, it's hard to shift the equilibrium).

I have a friend who's 6'7". Invariably the first question he was asked when he met new people was "wow you're tall, do you play basketball?" He hates basketball. But society's perception of what he'd be good at was tied into his height. He can't change it, he didn't ask for it, and he certainly showed no interest or indication that he'd like to discuss basketball.

That's an outside force impinging on his sense of identity. Same goes for women and what they think society values. Some women play the game, double down and use it as a zero-sum weapon against other women to get ahead. Some don't have a choice, or the will, and just get trampled (by the first group of women).

But again, the difference is that you don't _have_ to play this game. There are other games you can play, and society will accept you for it. Women don't get that choice. This is the game that has to be played, if they're to participate in society.

<comment><USER10> I am not saying that looking good doesn't matter, sure it does. But it begins to truly matter only if you want it to.

The world is a tough place. Its difficult out there for the mild hearted. But that's the case with all the genders. When I was not allowed cricket for my school team, I didn't take that as male oppression or something that should dumb me down for ever. Although the common perception at that time was, if you played well you are more likely to get a girlfriend at that directly cor related to being _smart_. Its just that I was meant to do something else. Which I did eventually and did pretty well.

Today I have trouble getting a bride for marriage(here in India these things matter a lot). But I know deep down within me, I may not be a alpha male among the pack, not very muscular, smart good looking and physically active. But for the kind of hard work I put in I will be a lot more richer than the alpha males.

In fact this happens all the time, The society is sure responsible for these sort of perceptions. But they become the reality only if we want to.

Now to all girls who reject me to settle with a alpha male, when you discover a decade later I'm more financially rich. Please don't call that women's oppression. That just _making wrong decisions and paying for it later._

<comment><USER19> > _Now to all girls who reject me to settle with a alpha male, when you > discover a decade later I'm more financially rich. Please don't call that > women's oppression. That just making wrong decisions and paying for it > later._

So, the fact that you found a game you can play and win at, justifies the mistreatment of people losing at other games? ;)

I appreciate your point, and i agree that people who are strong-willed enough can break the game, but that still doesn't change the fact that they're expected to play. The fact that society values different things at different stages of life doesn't mean that the game that you're good at is any fairer than the games you were bad at when society valued youth, vitality and ability to hit and/or catch a ball. All that's different is that you're winning :P

I dig that the internet is all about flying your freak-flag, but there are still common standards that society expects you to adhere to. When you go grocery shopping, or when you pass your neighbors on your way to work, or when you're out with your friends and you've got to deal with the bouncers at a club, or a bar tender at a pub. All of these places have expected APIs, and if you behave out of their bounds you have to do on the fly content negotiation, and some people will be tolerant and accept such negotiations, and other people are just going to fire back "request denied".

I agree to an extent that we control how much we let that get to us. But there are a lot of things that go into our mental health and stability. If your family is also constantly haranguing you about the same shit you get from everyone else, you have no safe quarter to be yourself (again except maybe the internets). That's not really a healthy/sane way to live.

I'm not Indian, but the Chinese side of my family totally thinks that my worth (both as an individual and as a representative of my family) is attached to my financial stability and whether i've got a "real job" or not. Let me tell you, i have gotten a lot less flack now that i'm not freelancing. They were also weirded out that i got married prior to reaching that point of financial stability. But that in a way is the benefit of being the son of immigrants. The things that society judges me by are different from the metrics that my family judges me by. That's something that people like me can play to my advantage, or for some people, it means that they get the worst of both worlds, they can't win either in society's perception (and stay true to their family) or visa versa.

The fundamental question is how optional each of these games are. I don't take it for granted that they are optional. I think that taking the position that women have a choice to play the game is a difficult one for me to accept.

<comment><USER10> _I don't take it for granted that they are optional. I think that taking the position that women have a choice to play the game is a difficult one for me to accept._

This is something that even I agree, Here in India a lot of women are helpless and clearly driven by social pressures. Often under poverty and caste obligations.

But we are not talking about that section of women here. We are talking of girls(in the article) who in very clear conscious have the choice to spent their time, money and resources in a particular way. But don't take the best way out, and take the wrong choice.

This is utmost bad decision making, not a social problem. Otherwise every other social persuasion or thought can become your life problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I mostly agree with the sentiment, but this line stuck out at me:

      25 per cent of young American women would rather win
      America's Next Top Model than the Nobel Peace Prize.

Only 25%? That's _spectacularly good_ compared to their male counterparts. What percent of young American men do you think would rather win the Super Bowl than the Nobel Peace Prize? It's got to be at least half.

<comment><USER21> How many of those women responded to the top model because the Peace Prize is a heavily politicized prize given to the most expedient person of the hour? Maybe they should have asked something like "Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology" (not to say that there isn't politics in science prizes, but it's a lot better than a newly minted President Obama receiving a prize and going, Um, thanks? What did I do?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything."

Hate to say it, but what if they are? Lots of studies show that pretty people get further in life.

Not that I mind girls being interested in other things, but perhaps the ideology should be kept in check.

Even if a girl doesn't care about her looks, other people will, and she has to learn to deal with it.

<comment><USER22> "Lots of studies show that pretty people get further in life." [citation needed]

<comment><USER11> <http://lmgtfy.com/?q=prettier+people+get+further+in+life>

You know, by saying "citation needed" what you actually say is "I don't really care for your opinion". If I wasn't so desperate to procrastinate, I should just ignore you. Why waste energy to educate you if you are obviously not interested in learning?

<comment><USER23> Are you serious?

> by saying "citation needed" what you actually say is "I don't really care > for your opinion".

You're saying "I don't care for your random opinion you could have pulled out of your ass with no correspondence to the real world, please demonstrate that you didn't just make that up."

When you make a claim that you want to be taken seriously, cite your source. It's not hard, and it's sure as hell _not anyone else's job_. If you don't cite a source, people will reasonably assume that you have none, and disregard what you're saying. That's fine if you don't care, but I repeat, _if you want to be taken seriously_ , cite your source.

That job is yours and yours alone, for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, only you can cite your source because only you actually know what source you used.

Secondly, from a utilitarian efficiency perspective, if it takes X minutes to look up and post the source, then the total time spent when you cite your source is X, but if you don't, and everyone has to look it up themselves, the total time spent is X*n, where n is the number of people who read your post. For values of n greater than one, this is dumb. Do the sourcing once, to avoid duplication of effort.

<comment><USER11> Also consider this: if PG or Steve Jobs made some claim, would you also reply with a blunt "citation needed"?

<comment><USER23> If Steve Jobs made some claim about the history of Apple Computer, I wouldn't ask for a source because he _is_ a source. If he were making a claim about the correlation between attractiveness and success, then yes I'd ask for a source, because why should he know anything about that in particular?

But even in that case, he's already a real person I know of, a person who is known to be pretty intelligent, a person whose motivations I can have a reasonable guess at, a person who I know needs to be careful about what they say in public fora. Each of these things put Steve Jobs a little ahead of 'random stranger on the internet' for reliability.

<comment><USER11> "a person who is known to be pretty intelligent"

That is just the thing. Your default assumption about an unknown person seems to be that he or she is not intelligent and doesn't have anything worthwhile to say. That might be rational, but I don't think it is very conductive for human exchange.

Another thing: why should I be interested in convincing you that I have something worthwhile to say? What is in it for me?

<comment><USER23> > Your default assumption about an unknown person seems to be that he or she > is not intelligent and doesn't have anything worthwhile to say.

My default assumption is that the person is of _average_ intelligence. Jobs is of substantially above average intelligence, as demonstrated by having founded and run an extremely successful technology company. That puts him ahead.

> why should I be interested in convincing you that I have something > worthwhile to say? What is in it for me?

I've addressed this before as well, when I said "if you want to be taken seriously". If you don't care about the opinions of people who read your posts, that's fine. If you do care, cite your sources so people can tell that what you're saying corresponds to reality. Still, if you really aren't concerned about what people think when they read your comments, why not just write them in a text file? Why publish things on the net if you don't want people to think you're saying something worthwhile?

<comment><USER11> I'd say the notion that providing lots of citations leads to people taking me more serious needs at least a citation. I don't think it works that way in general.

It is also not as easy: how does pointing to another random person on the internet (my citation) make me a more credible random person? Even studies by actual scientists can be bogus. How am I to know which sources you trust?

Also, I made a claim that was very easy to verify ("there are lots of studies on topic x"). Should I also provide sources if I claim "the sky is blue"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> These are good tips, here's how my conversation generally goes with other people's children:

"Hello, I'm Phil" "Hi, I'm Maya"

Then just stare at one another until another adult speaks.

</comment><comment><USER25> "Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything."

But when you _see_ someone for the first time appearances _are_ the first thing you notice... unless you can read minds.

Looks are important. Both men _and_ women keep up appearances. Furthermore, you know how smart you are, and no amount of telling you your appearance is a great asset is going to make you dumber.

<comment><USER15> >But when you see someone for the first time appearances are the first thing you notice... unless you can read minds.

Yet when talking to boys, people generally don't say - "Oh, what a handsome boy you are, and how nicely you dress!" as an opening phrase. We don't sell these kind of tshirts to boys: [http://boingboing.net/2011/08/31/jc-penny-t- shirt-now-pulled...](http://boingboing.net/2011/08/31/jc-penny-t-shirt-now- pulled-im-too-pretty-to-do-homework.html)

>Looks are important. [...] no amount of telling you your appearance is a great asset is going to make you dumber.

No, but it tells you what you should spend your time and energy on improving. Again, something we only do for girls.

<comment><USER26> > Yet when talking to boys, people generally don't say - "Oh, what a handsome > boy you are, and how nicely you dress!"

I agree it's not symmetrical, but I _do_ hear this kind of thing directed at male children pretty frequently, especially in the relatives/family-friends type setting. "Oh what a handsome young man you have!" isn't uncommon at all. Though I do tend to associate it with older women, for some reason; at least as a young lad myself, I think it's a comment I heard mostly from older aunts.

<comment><USER6> Boys generally only hear that sort of statement from family members at family gatherings.

Young girls hear how pretty their dress or hair or smile is from just about anyone upon introduction. They are put into ballet classes where they learn to act pretty, into girl scouts where they do traditional arts and crafts rather than the camping and leadership that boy scouts focuses on, and are given play makeup until around ten or so when they are encouraged to learn how to put real makeup on. Many young girls know what dieting is, and start doing so in intermediate school- before they have even stopped growing. Young girls are supposed to behave appropriately as such, while loud, rude, and overly rambunctious behavior from boys are tolerated as "boys will be boys". All of this is anecdotal from my own experiences, but I believe to be true in many areas of the US.

The extent to which young girls are raised to be pretty is on a completely different level of young boys.

<comment><USER25> It is at a different level, but only because it's simply more practical in society for a girl to be pretty than it is for a boy.

You'd have to make everyone ignore beauty to disincentivize being pretty for girls and that is going to be pretty impossible.

As more girls start to realize their independence from men (because of education now opened up fully for women) the emphasis on beauty will naturally start eroding away as they realize they can do other things to support themselves and get what they want in life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is talking only about one part of the story, while it can't be denied that people demand girls to look good. At the same time, girls themselves get into peer pressure easily. Very quickly in their lives they get the feeling that in order to be 'looked at' you have to be beautiful. I am not saying that guys don't suffer from this, but girls suffer from this more than guys.

Its like the TV channels competing for TRP's. The demand for a something good exists, but the fact is that the demand is fueled by the content providers and not viewers.

Now on a larger scale, the society doesn't dumb down girls. Its just the mere biological reasons prevent them from doing so many jobs that are common for men. Women have higher social pressures, physically and biologically they have more limitations when compared to men. They have bigger social pressures to deal with. All in all, this counts for most of the reasons why women don't get the _incremental learning_ at the same rate as men.

Now come to look at the other part of it, there is huge difference between looking good/presentable and wild chase for beauty. Cosmetic products exist both for men and women, but their nature differ. Apart from your usual set of deodorants and usual kit et al, you don't mascara or lipstick for men. Not that such a thing is not desirable for men, but its just that men won't chase it at all.

Ultimately you truly get what you want.

<comment><USER27>
        Not that such a thing is not desirable for men, but its just that men won't chase it at all.

Give it time for marketing departments to do their jobs...

<comment><USER28> >> Give it time for marketing departments to do their jobs...

Absolutely. They are working overtime on this one. Recently, India has seen a sudden surge in cosmetics for men. [http://www.google.co.in/search?q=male+cosmetics+india+filety...](http://www.google.co.in/search?q=male+cosmetics+india+filetype:pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As a guy, and a geek, I definitely find intelligence highly attractive (and I think most of you would agree with me). Since geeks will eventually inherit the earth, wouldn't it be advantageous to start teaching our women how they can get ahead on this curve by flaunting their intelligence? :)

<comment><USER22> As a guy, this type of thinking once again puts the value on women as 'attractiveness'. Why isn't intelligence good for its own sake?

<comment><USER29> I never said intelligence wasn't good for its own sake, nor was I trying to imply a woman's worth is only in her level of attractiveness. Certainly in a ideal world we would all aspire to goals without concern for outside opinion, but alas we don't live in a vacuum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Whenever I think about "beauty" this poem automatically comes to my mind -

Beautiful faces are those that wear–

It matters little if dark or fair–

Whole-souled honesty printed there.

Beautiful eyes are those that show,

Like crystal panes where hearth-fires glow,

Beautiful thoughts that burn below.

Beautiful lips are those whose words

Leap from the heart like songs of birds,

Yet whose utterance prudence girds.

Beautiful hands are those that do

Work that is earnest and brave and true,

Moment by moment the long day through.

Beautiful feet are those that go

On kindly ministries to and fro,

Down lowliest ways if God wills it so.

Beautiful shoulders are those that bear

Ceaseless burdens of homely care,

With patient grace and daily prayer.

Beautiful twilight at set of sun,

Beautiful goal with race well won,

Beautiful rest with work well done.

Beautiful graves where grasses creep,

Where brown leaves fall, where drifts lie deep,

Over worn-out hands! Ah, beautiful sleep.

–Ellen P. Allerton

</comment><comment><USER31> A lovely pot-pourri of anecdotes and hand-picked exceptional examples.

<comment><USER15> It's a blog post, not a research paper. If course it will use anecdotes. Do you have any counter examples to show an exceptional bias in their "hand- picking"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Man she's been shopping that column around for a while.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/how-to-talk-to- litt...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-bloom/how-to-talk-to-little- gir_b_882510.html?ref=fb&src=sp)

</comment><comment><USER33> This same item, but from an American publication, was posted to HN a couple of months ago. Reheated, it still does not impress.

</comment><comment><USER34> Of course people irrespective of their gender should be able to do what they want to, but hailing a genetic gift of smartness over a genetic gift of beauty, or vice-versa doesn't make sense. It's how evolution has worked up until now - it's pretty much a beauty pageant.

Trying to change a process that has evolved us into what we are is going to take time. Of course not all aspects of evolution are perfect, but this - favouring beauty over ugliness/fatness is pretty darn effective.

Without competition, we would all be slobs - no scratch that - <USER2> organisms.

So, in conslusion - we are who we are - whether you want to fight and change that is your wish, but don't go preaching to others about what we should or should not do. I'm going to go tell all the little girls around me how cute they are. Maybe not at the same time though, lest I get mistaken for a paedophile. :P

<comment><USER35> I don't know what your point is. Nowhere is the author making the point that you should hail any genetic gifts. And nowhere is she arguing that good looks are not beneficial.

Moreover, if you want to make Darwinian arguments, one could equally well say that without competition we'd all be as stupid as amoebas. I don't see where you get support for appearance being more favored than intelligence.

Furthermore, why do you focus on either of these attributes being genetic at all? If we assume that they are, then it shouldn't matter whether we encourage people to care about _either_ their intelligence or appearance. But clearly there is a huge amount of nurture in both aspects, so the genetic aspect is just a red herring.

The real question is whether encouraging girls to focus on appearance over anything else is helpful or healthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> _Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything._

Appearance is almost always the first thing you notice about someone. I'm not sure pretending otherwise is especially practical or will really help much in the long run.

<comment><USER37> This applies to guys as well as girls. My parents made sure that I learned that people judge me on how I look, smell, speak, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Thanks, that was interesting. Not least the comments, including one from "Too Smart", which said: "Being dumb is much better than having to play dumb. It does no good for a girl to be too smart," and suggested complimenting the girl for her sweet looks.

Sort of trollish? Maybe, but it also is true that 'good looks' _show_ , and have immediate 'consequences', whereas the intelligence that's innate to us doesn't show, and the real challenge of intelligence maybe is to find a way to do something with it. Something that makes life meaningful. Which takes constant work, self-confidence, and daring.

</comment><comment><USER39> Parents with one kid believe it's nurture, parents with 2 or more know it's nature.

</comment><comment><USER40> The desire to be attractive is hard-wired into female biology. Fundamentally, we exist to survive and reproduce. Millions of years of evolution have evolved visual cues that signal health - especially reproductive health in both men and women however women's interest in successfully advertising their reproductive health is absolutely essential to what they have evolved over millions of years to do - which is bear children.

High intelligence is not necessary to survive and reproduce successfully even in today's world which explains why most women (and probably most - but less men) would rather be "hot" than "smart". In general, during the reproductive phase of their lives (and long after that as well), women focus advertising their reproductive health, and men - their status.

High intelligence however is key to acquiring status - which is much more important for men than for women which in my mind explains why more men than women are interested in being smart.

<comment><USER41> If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that looking attractive for women is basically a biological imperative? The problem, as I see it, is that the evolved visual cues signalling good reproductive health are not in the slightest bit similar to what the media purport to be attractive today.

Look for example at Neolithic figurines... women with large bellies, ample bosoms, wide hips. That's not what's plastered all over magazines and TV.

<comment><USER14> I'm thinking that the fertility symbols where the woman is fit and thin far outnumber the ones where the woman is visibly obese. Wide hips, large bosom, healthy layer of fat, most certainly. But obesity? Rare. India, Egypt, Rome. All those sculptures look to be in the confines of healthy weight. I doubt that people living in that age had access to TV or magazines. Looks to me like you're quite obviously cherry-picking.

<comment><USER41> Not deliberately cherry picking, simply picking a time before great royal families and extravagant emperors had an impact on fashions and culture. Don't get me wrong, I'm no expert on this (just a passing interest) so happy to be informed otherwise.

Side note: there's an interesting theory in Ann Sinnott's Breastfeeding Older Children about fertility / female symbols and their relation to patriarchy and our 'progress' from nomadic hunter gatherers. The theory goes that as we settled down into working the land / raising animals, where women were obviously needed more, they became less valued for child birth / child rearing and consequently these fertility symbols not only got slimmer, but started to be replaced by a greater quantity of male / phallic symbology.

Only vaguely related to the topic at hand but hugely interesting (to me, anyway!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What a beautiful story of her interaction with that little girl. I hope i'm like that with my daughter when she's that age :)

<comment><USER43> That's also a good way to interact with little boys, incidentally. It makes you a _much_ more interesting adult than someone who just says and does the same boring things as every other adult who is suddenly faced with a child.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> If beauty consciousness in girls can be said as peer pressure then geek/nerd consciousness in boys can be said as peer pressure as well. Boys who don't play videogames or watch sci-fi/action movies or listen to some complex rock/electronic music genre or those who are not gadget freaks or those who're not into science/technology/engineering in general are seen as less masculine (at least in a first world society).

I think the reason why femininity is looked down is the economic models of the last 150 years which have favored science over art, rationality over irrationality and utility over authenticity. I think the world needs a second romantic era to truly appreciate the feminine aspects of beauty/creativity/genuineness.

</comment><comment><USER45> Compare with <http://jcs.biologists.org/content/121/11/1771.full> another post at HN at around the same time, about the importance of stupidity in science. Two very different conceptions of dumb.

I would also like to stress that it is not really about looks, only, but about being always "in character" for the woman, which is pretty and dumb, true, but would be much better described as "good marrying material".

Finally, please, anyone who cared about this, check out "Ada Lovelace Day", to happen this year a month from today. <http://findingada.com/about/>

</comment><comment><USER46> I was under the impression that female educational attainment was WAY up and continuing to increase. Oh I'm sorry, is this article only about correlations that are convenient for your premise?

</comment><comment><USER47> I loved this. I couldn't agree more. I don't really have any great salient points or anecdotes to add but I would love to live in a world where more people think this way. As a thought experiment though, what would it take to change this? Could this be published advice to parents? Parenting classes, post-natal something? I don't know. Prescriptive stuff is clearly not going to be popular, but in the spirit of the article - if you had a magic wand, what would you do to spread this thinking?

</comment><comment><USER48> "be the change you want to see in the world"

The author is fighting an uphill battle on this one, but I appreciate her ideal. Never underestimate the power your words have on shaping a child's life.

</comment><comment><USER49> I quote a HN comment from HilbertSpace in its entirety:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2111651>

> "Way before age 5, the little girls realize that they are small versions of > Mommy and NOT Daddy. They know in absolute terms that they are a GIRL and > NOT a BOY.

Since their mommy was happy being a mommy, the little girls want to be like Mommy and on the 'mommy track'.

By about age 18 months, little girls are already masters at eliciting positive emotions from adults, MUCH better than boys. The girls are also MUCH better at reading emotions than boys. Facial expressions and eye contact are part of how the girls read and elicit emotions; other ways are to 'act' (they are MUCH better at acting than the boys) cute, meek, and sweet and to be pretty. Since being pretty lets them do better eliciting positive emotions, they love pretty dresses with ruffles and ribbons. So, they are in a 'virtuous circle': They act sweet, elicit positive emotions in an adult, e.g., father, grandfather, uncle, get a gift of a pretty dress, wear the dress, elicit even more positive emotions, get even more pretty dresses, white bedroom furniture, patent leather shoes, cute stuffed animals, etc.

Having to act like a boy or be treated like a boy, instead of like a girl, would be terrifying to them.

So, in their first years, such little girls, to be on the 'mommy track' want to play with dolls and not Erector sets, want to work at being pretty and not how to hot rod a car, want to learn how to bake a cake and not how to plug together a SATA RAID array.

Give such a girl a toy truck and she will know instantly that the toy is 'for boys' and will avoid it as a big threat.

Generally, from a little after birth and for nearly all their lives, human females are MUCH more emotional than human males. So, they pay a LOT of attention to emotions, both theirs and others'.

One of a human female's strongest emotions is to get security from membership in, and praise, acceptance, and approval from, groups, especially groups of females about their own age. That is, they are 'herd animals'. Gossip? It's how they make connections with others in the herd. Why do they like cell phones so much? For more gossip. Why pay so much attention to fashion? To 'fit in' with the herd.

In such a herd, in most respects the females try hard to be like the 'average' of the herd and not to stand out or look different. [An exception is when a female wants to lead her herd, e.g., go to Clicker, follow the biographies, get the one for the Astors, and look at Ms. Astor and her herd of 400.] Well, as long as human females with good parenting are on the 'mommy track', and the human race will be nearly dead otherwise, the 'average' of the herd will emphasize the 'mommy track', dolls, looking pretty, cakes, and clothes and not Erector sets, hot rodding cars, or building RAID arrays.

When it comes to a college major, any human female 18 months or older will recognize in a milli, micro, nano second that her herd believes that mathematics, physical science, engineering, and computer science are subjects for boys and NOT girls. Instead the girl subjects are English literature, French, music, acting, 'communications', sociology, psychology, nursing, maybe accounting, and K-12 education. By college the girls have been working 24 x 7 for about 16 years to fit in with the herd of girls, and their chances of leaving the herd in college to major in computer science are slim to none.

Don't expect this situation to change easily or soon: Mother Nature was there LONG before computer science, and, as we know, "It's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.". Or, to get girls to major in computer science, "You are dealing with forces you cannot possibly understand.". Having women pursuing computer careers give girls in middle school lectures on computer careers will stick like water on a duck's back -- not a chance. Nearly all the girls will just conclude that at most such careers are for girls who are not doing well fitting into the herd of girls, are not very good socially, don't get invited to the more desirable parties, don't get the good dates, are not very pretty, and are not in line to be good as wives and mommies. By middle school, the girls have already received oceans of influences about 'female roles', and changing the directions these girls have selected and pursued so strongly for so long is hopeless..."

<comment><USER10> From your post I get a feeling that the average girl is happy being what she is now. Then I fail to understand whats the need for posts in this thread's original link.And what is the complain all about? Looks like the girlish definition of 'dumb' is a lot more different than ours. If being good looking and beautiful is what makes them feel successful, then _why isn't that goal worth chasing_.

I do know when we talk of women in the military, or ones burning midnight oil in some software company chasing a tough deadline we talking of exceptions and outliers. Not all women want to be that, not all want physically stressful jobs which demand a lot of endurance. Not all want emotionally demanding jobs. Not all want to be in a place where working midnights and weekends is inevitable. Vast majority of them are just happy with current roles.

If so why should the whole majority of womenfolk change just for a few outliers?

<comment><USER38> I suspect that a) the vast majority of womenfolk simply don't exist - <USER3> some are outliers doesn't mean that the majority are alike, because give it what you like, b) social conditions are changing, for both men and women there are very contradictory expectations - so it may very well be that there is no way to be (culturally) satisfied, and thus c) the vast majority isn't happy. Add to that d), even if we are all up to making choices where we are truly existentially alone, many will for a big part of their life choose as their environment does, because choosing what you want is scary, and doing as others do gives - cold - comfort.

I think there are big changes coming up everywhere.

There are so many games one can play, which at least give a thrill, but that doesn't mean it's satisfying for life. It's like junk food. I suppose that's what much marketing does.

Society is not an intentional result - it's the unintentional result of sometimes (mostly not) intentional actions. Most of the time our bodies are on auto-pilot.

<comment><USER50> I dated a nursing student in college, so I ran in that social circle a bit, and I knew a _lot_ of girls who made no bones at all about wanting marriage (with an appropriately expensive wedding), children, and an end to the professional life as soon as absolutely feasible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Ah, the comments section of just about any article on the internet, always a goldmine of inadvertent comedy. My personal favorite from this one, right at the top:

"What's wrong with wanting to be hot rather than smart? Not everyone can be intelligent, and both beauty and intelligence are natural, requiring no work."

Priceless!

</comment><comment><USER52> This great article shouldn't be surrounded by those stupid banners dumbing down women.

</comment><comment><USER53> The amount of ignorance and misogyny in here is staggering. Have any of you ever actually _talked_ to a woman? I'll boil down the argument into one that favors women:

Men are biologically programmed to be violent. We should find it as no surprise that the vast majority of violent criminals are men. After all, it's their biology. And thus all men should be regarded as likely violent in the right circumstances. Also we should not trust men to care for small children, because they have no idea what they are doing since they lack the biological drive for child-rearing.

<comment><USER54> _The amount of ignorance and misogyny in here is staggering._

Suggesting that biological factors result in statistical differences between men and women is not misogyny. "Different" does not mean better or worse.

 _Men are biologically programmed to be violent. We should find it as no surprise that the vast majority of violent criminals are men._

Essentially true. "Biologically programmed" is a bit strong, but in a sexism- free utopia would you seriously expect 50% of violent criminals to be women?

 _Also we should not trust men to care for small children, because they have no idea what they are doing since they lack the biological drive for child- rearing._

Strawman. Nobody is saying that women should be discouraged from or can't excel in any area. It's just that if individual choices result in more male than female tech startup founders, and more female than male preschool workers, it may not be due to the all-powerful patriarchy.

<comment><USER53> I find it amusing that you took a parody of the group-think displayed here as a serious argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> None of this advice applies to me, of course. As a man and therefore a child molesting rapist just waiting for my chance to strike, the idea that I could have any sort of conversation with a little girl - let alone sit down on a couch and talk privately - is simply laughable.

<comment><USER56> There ought to be a Godwin's Law about threads talking about gender on the Internet. Given a certain concentration of comments on the subject, a sarcastic and baseless complaint of the assumption of male guilt (especially absurb, off topic comments about rape!) must appear.

<comment><USER57> Well, is he wrong? I know _I_ make an active effort to avoid children...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is kind of weird and forced. _All_ social interactions start in a superficial way. Kids don't show up in their own cars ("hey, is that the new Brotus Fundero?"). They don't (usually) wear t-shirts from their last trade show or vacation. They aren't toting new laptops in unique courier bags and holding exotic drinks.

You're basically stuck complementing their dress, hat, or whatever. That's how social interaction works, regardless of gender. You can move on to TV shows, books, and political affiliation later, but you need an opener.

</comment><comment><USER59> Folks, this thread has a lot of confused thinking that is dangerous; we need the thinking in this thread to be more clear.

First reality check. There is an old remark about research in psychology, that all the results either (1) are solid science that, however, say next to nothing important about humans or (2) say something important about humans, however, are junk as science.

Similarly, for the main issue here, that is, for what is necessary in sex differences, for the role of nature versus nurture, etc., the results from solid science won't be very important and the very important results won't be solid science. Net, to address the issue scientifically, so far we are STUCKO. Sorry 'bout that.

Second reality check. On the issue of the OP, that is, how to treat girls, young women, and women, each person WILL necessarily take some position. That is, no one gets to decline to choose an answer. We MUST have an answer. We do not have the luxury of no answer, and, from the first reality check, the answer we take on the important parts of the issue will not be from solid science. Sorry 'bout that.

Solid science is great stuff. However, quite generally in life, we have to make decisions without solid science. Sorry 'bout that.

Third reality check. I can assure you that it is actually fairly easy to get things very wrong in treatment of females, and the consequences can be from awful down to fatal. I exaggerate not. I can use Google Earth to give you the coordinates of the tombstone. So, the issue here is SERIOUS.

There is a moral issue: Men don't want to be unfair or cruel to the females. So, here's a practical resolution: Give the girls plenty of opportunity. Give them dolls and also erector sets, white bedroom furniture and also a basketball goal, tell them they are cute, sweet, pretty, darling, adorable, and precious and also explain TCP/IP, DNS, and POP 3, encourage them in both English literature and physics, in both art history and solid geometry, have them help you make chicken salad and also put the snow tires on the car, mop the kitchen floor and also sweep out the garage.

Some people who have tried this practical resolution came to a conclusion: The little girls quickly, strongly moved toward the stereotype for cute, sweet little girls. They played with the dolls and ignored the erector set; they liked art history much more than solid geometry; they were eager enough to mop the kitchen floor but wanted nothing to do with the garage. They were much more eager to be a cooperative member of a group than to strike out on some curiosity driven, independent, creative investigation.

Important information about the girls? Yes. Solid science? No. Did I mention that quite generally in life, we have to make decisions without solid science?

But more is possible: If parents and society push and shove, keep telling the girls to 'perform' well at 'boy activities', then, girls, being eager to please and more obedient, often will. If push them to be independent, autonomous, assertive, self-sufficient, and equal and to resent dependency, passivity, membership, partnership, subservience, etc., then through, say, college, they will. My experience is that, then, too likely (granted, not always) you will find that you have created a VERY 'mixed up' young woman and a weak, sick, or dead limb on the tree and conclude that Mother Nature considered all such issues long before you did and that it's not nice to try to fool Mother Nature.

Here's an easier approach: If only from an 'asymptotic' consideration, place value on her being a strong limb in the tree. Do a really good job taking care of her until can help her find a really good husband, and then help her husband continue to take very good care of her and her children. Have her be good as a wife and mother in a secure, strong family. This thought, perhaps now with feminism really offensive, is not original with me. Instead, in the "Foreword" to

Maggie Scarf, 'Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage', Random House, New York, ISBN 0-394-5585-X, 1987.

Dr. Carol Nadelson, past president of the American Psychiatric Association, wrote:

"Traditional marriage is about offspring, security, and caretaking."

If want her to be quite active between her ears and especially busy and productive, then emphasize to her and help her in how much there is to know about helping her children with their emotional, rational, psychological, social, artistic, physical, practical, verbal, quantitative, manual, scientific, technological, and creative problem solving development and understanding of history, business, the economy, people, groups, society, politics, etc., how far and away the most important influence on them, for their academic performance and nearly everything else, is the nurturing they get at home, and how important it is to build and have a secure, strong family and how she can play a central role there. Indeed, she might just take on doing a good job home schooling her children through, say, the International Baccalaureate program, high SAT scores, etc. Let the children get through the Beethoven piano sonatas and the Bach unaccompanied violin pieces, Rudin's 'Principles of Mathematical Analysis', Royden's 'Real Analysis', Breiman's 'Probability', and the 'Feynman Lectures on Physics' -- should keep them busy for a while!

What do you want? Lots of really healthy grandchildren or someone to sweep out the garage?</comment>


Stuck at home, scientists discover new insect species - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/stuck-at-home-scientists-discover-9-new-insect-species/ <comment><USER2> I read the book "Never Home Alone" [1] last year. It's about all the tiny critters that are around us all the time without us noticing them.

One of the things the author mentioned that stuck with me is never to assume that something you find has been documented and studied before. There is a whole lot of world out there, and only so many scientists.

I believe one of the anecdotes he shared during that part was some high school kid that decided they were going to find a new species of insect. They went literally out into their yard and managed to find a novel species of butterfly or something like that.

A very interesting book if anyone was looking for a recommendation.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39088985-never-home- alon...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39088985-never-home-alone)

<comment><USER3> Seeing these discoveries happening so close to home makes me wonder how the rate of speciation compares to the rate of discovery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating how many opportunities there are in entomology, to make a discovery.

I only wish we had a picture of the entomologist. She is the nominal subject of the article, but we get only a picture of Dr. Brown her boss.

</comment><comment><USER5> What if mutations happens with much more frequency than people imagine, such that it is almost analogous to spontaneous creation sometimes - or actually is spontaneous creation. Like, natural selection and inherited mutations are just one process, and there actually is a level of spontaneity occurring.

Science has a way to factor that in and update its assumptions, but not when everyone dismisses the idea because so much energy has been put into a polar opposite process.</comment>


It's a polyglot world after all - Lift adding support for JRuby - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/liftweb/browse_thread/thread/f1638df7fbdd7b42

<comment><USER2> _Lift is hands-down the best web framework available today..._

Can someone a little less involved please comment on the validity of this and the claims that follow it? Is it something I should be checking out?

<comment><USER3> It is pretty good. Is it the best? I couldn't say. Some misc. good points:

\- It runs on the JVM, so you get performance and libraries, but you don't need to go through all the Java BS to get something working. (Seriously, performance is overlooked. If performance is not an issue, why did Facebook write HipHop?)

\- Comet support (via Actors) is great and really easy to use. Ajax as well. Writing interactive website is very easy.

\- The "no plumbing" approach is pretty good. You don't have to setup routes of anything (mostly). You just embed callbacks directly in the page in a lot of cases and things just work.

\- Templates are nice.

The bad points:

\- The ORM situation isn't great.

\- The documentation is terrible (but improving).

Overall Lift is certainly worth looking at for some good ideas. Having a concise language and simple toolkit on the JVM is great.

<comment><USER4> > If performance is not an issue, why did Facebook write HipHop?

Energy. Facebook has thousands of servers running PHP code. HipHop allows them to have the same performance with half the servers[1]. 50% less servers at that scale equates to non-trivial energy (and cost) savings.

[1] <http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/358>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool! When I first saw this I thought it was going to be about Lift developers being able to use ruby code- there are a lot of Ruby packages out there that they could benefit from using.

Just from looking at Scala, it seems like a superior language, and from looking at Lift it seems like a well done web framework. However, a lot of the benefit of Rails comes from the ecosystem where there is a plugin for your every need. I doubt that Lift can offer enough benefits to offset that.

Maybe they can use this for their pattern matching: <https://github.com/waves/functor>

<comment><USER4> Interesting that you say Lift developers could benefit from Ruby packages; generally a big pro for Lift/Scala is access the the multitude of Java packages. JRuby, Scala, Clojure and other JVM languages all benefit from that ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As someone who uses Lift (in addition to other frameworks) I'm a bit surprised by this decision. Lift is at the state where it is just getting the features and docs to be useful to a wider audience. Scala adoption is rising. It seems David Pollak is going for the corporate market and I don't think this is the right focus at this stage of Lift's development.

<comment><USER6> Is Ruby making inroads in the corporate market?

<comment><USER3> I think so. Thoughtworks, who are a straight-up corporate consultancy, have done Ruby since 2006. Ruby is certainly further along the adoption curve than Scala, so perhaps DPP is trying to leapfrog over the adoption of Scala by adding JRuby support. However, IMO Scala is not what is holding Lift back -- it's lack of decent documentation. Just read the other comments on this post...

<comment><USER7> I've been doing Rails work at ThoughtWorks for more than three years now. Judging from the projects I've been on, Ruby has achieved a fair amount of penetration with the Fortune 500 crowd. Whether that's expanding, topped off, or contracting, I can't judge.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Lego Minifig Timeline - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5070884/exclusive-the-lego-minifig-timeline <comment><USER2> These bring back memories. But it's also kind of sad how all the modern minifigs are branded. Spongebob? Ugh.

It sounds crazy, but I actually credit Lego as a huge reason I became an engineer and programmer. It really cultivated my desire to build things.</comment>