["A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. " - Albert Einstein]

posted from Bloggeroid

["Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing. " - Abraham Lincoln]

posted from Bloggeroid

Low IQ & Conservative Beliefs Linked to Prejudice

- Yahoo! News

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy. The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience. "Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said. Controversy ahead The findings combine three hot-button topics. "They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody." Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You] "The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists." Brains and bias Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican] In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100. Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.) As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias. People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races. "This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science. A study of averages Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said. "There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said. Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally. "We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap." Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world. "Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice." In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]

Frank Buckley : "Whatever you say about the Euro, it's a great insulator" :p

Jobless man builds a house out of $1.82 billion worth of shredded money | Technology News Blog - Yahoo! News

What would you do with $1.82 billion worth of shredded money? In Ireland, people build houses out of it — at least that's what Dublin-based artist Frank Buckley did. The unemployed artist originally wanted to create a gallery for his series of mixed-media artworks called "Expressions of Recession," but he ended up building a house instead. Buckley has been working roughly 12 hours a day every day since the beginning of December. During the early part of the construction process, he made bricks out of the decommissioned Euros Ireland's mint lent him. In all, around 50,000 money bricks went into building the house that consists of a bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room. He plans to continue expanding the house that sits on an empty office building to include a kitchen, a shower, and a patio. If you're wondering how it feels to live in a house made out of paper currency, he said that it's quite warm inside: "Whatever you say about the Euro, it's a great insulator." Frank is one of the countless people all over the globe affected by recession, and he built the house because he "wanted to create something from nothing." It will take around seven more weeks to complete building his new home, but Buckley (who's been living in the house since December) welcomes any visitor who wants to take a look at his billion-dollar masterpiece.

Davos Forum : China's reality lost in translation

Source: Yahoo News

The West has a skewed view of China which Beijing has to fix if it wants a better reception when it goes shopping abroad, business and political leaders said at the Davos forum Thursday.

"The problem in non-Chinese public opinion is that there's a Chinese official behind every Chinese business person," said World Trade Organization director-general Pascal Lamy.

"That's the perception -- that China is grabbing resources, that's what they are trying to do in new colonial something, that they're after technology, stealing.

"All these extremely negative views which overall translates into: this is a country that doesn't play by the rules," he added.

In addition, China is sending images of its rockets, brand-new high speed trains and its well-oiled organisation of the Olympic games to the world, giving the impression that it was fast becoming, if it is not already, as advanced as any other developed nation.

As a result, the country is getting a cool reception when it attempts to spend some of massive savings abroad on companies as local populations find it hard to believe that job losses at home are not somewhat linked to the Chinese raiders.

Chinese moves to acquire overseas assets have not always been welcomed. US automaker General Motors blocked the sale of Saab to two Chinese firms, leading to the Swedish marque's demise.

But the reality of China is far from its commonly held image, panelists at the Davos forum said.

John Zhao, chief executive officer of the private equity firm Hony Capital, noted that vast swathes of China still live below the poverty line.

In addition, Beijing is "not an active investor for the purpose of grabbing resources."

"They're simply saying 'let's make sure that those hard-earned monies don't depreciate," he said.

If Chinese companies are buying up their foreign counterparts, it is to produce goods to satisfy domestic demand that could help in rebalancing the country's current export-led economy, he said.

Zhao also pointed out that many Chinese companies were learning the rules as they go along, as "many are coming abroad for the first time to do business."

"There is a large percentage of Chinese companies, with their best efforts they just don't produce the best reports because they are still learning the rules," he said.

Robert Greifeld, Nasdaq chief executive officer, also noted that contrary to the United States, where the introduction of Sarbannes and Oxley rules were "met with general derision by the corporate class... in China, they seem to have an insatiable appetite to learn good governance standard."

However, "when you have 9 percent unemployment in the US and the goods are coming in 'made in China,' there's a common reaction we have to deal with," he said.

China needs to improve its communications with the rest of the world urgently as its ventures abroad will only grow in coming years, said Lamy.

"What remains true is that the flow of Chinese money to the rest of the world will increase whether it's private or public money or semi-public money.

"This will happen with the sort of political turbulences it will create.

"I anticipate this problem, in my view it's going to come and it's still time to try and frame in such a way that it does not degenerate," he said.

At the same time, China is not the only one with a communication problem.

"For the rest of the world, political leaders have to stop ceding to these denigrating stereotypes that are antagonising people, instead showing benefits of cooperation, this is all the more necessary in the times of tough, hard economic crisis," Lamy said.