Teh interesting (non-PHL-related) news stub thread

[Twin-Skies]

@Sforza

Aggression can mean a lot of things, such as being louder, moving faster, having an increased heart rate. It does not necessarily equate to violent behavior. There is a correllary, NOT a causational link between the two.

http://www.slate.com/id/2152487/

Not sure how valid that study is, in light of other studies...
Does pornography breed rape? Do violent movies breed violent crime? Quite the opposite, it seems.

Jacob Weisberg classified the different types of movie violence. Nancy Griffin found that even screenwriters worry about too much blood and guts. Laura Kipnis probed the cultural significance of Deep Throat. Dahlia Lithwick argued that "no means no" is still a good rule.The bottom line on these experiments is, "More Net access, less rape." A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines. And, according to Clemson professor Todd Kendall, the effects remain even after you control for all of the obvious confounding variables, such as alcohol consumption, police presence, poverty and unemployment rates, population density, and so forth.

OK, so we can at least tentatively conclude that Net access reduces rape. But that's a far cry from proving that porn access reduces rape. Maybe rape is down because the rapists are all indoors reading Slate or vandalizing Wikipedia. But professor Kendall points out that there is no similar effect of Internet access on homicide. It's hard to see how Wikipedia can deter rape without deterring other violent crimes at the same time. On the other hand, it's easy to imagine how porn might serve as a substitute for rape.

Then there's this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473688,00.html

Be prepared to see a lot of doom and gloom this week. Those year-end video and photo montages, year-in-review summaries and "a look back" reflections are inevitably gloomy even in boom times. That's likely to be especially true in 2008, a year that, admittedly, wasn't particularly filled with hope (Barack Obama's campaign promises aside).

I recently heard a conservative talk show host bemoan the "lack of God in our society" as reason for, among other things, the recent "Santa shooting massacre" in Covina, Calif. The left, meanwhile, is pointing to the financial meltdown as indicative of a different kind of moral failing — the unbridled greed they associate with free enterprise.

Truth is, they're both wrong. The last 12 months may prove not to be the most fondly recalled in recent American history, but things aren't all that bad. Most social indicators are still moving in the right direction. In general, our standard of living continues to improve. Advances in technology are helping us beat the diseases most likely to kill us; giving us more leisure time; making us more comfortable; giving us more convenience; and with the Internet, putting much of the world — quite literally — at our fingertips.

So here's the good news:

— Crime rates are still falling. Violent crime in America has been in a freefall since the early 1990s, despite a slight uptick in 2005 and 2006. Economists, criminologists, and sociologists can't conclusively say why. Explanations range from the 1990s economic boom to changes in crime-fighting strategy to the legalization of abortion to reductions in childhood exposure to lead. Whatever the reason, long-term trends show crime is down across the board.

— Sex crimes are down, too. Many conservatives and some leftist feminists often argue that the widespread availability of pornography and the "mainstreaming" of sex may effect an epidemic of sexual violence. It hasn't happened. Incidence of rape in America has been in swift decline for 20 years. In 2006, it hit its low point since the government started keeping statistics. Crimes against children have also been in decline. Both trends have taken place over a period in which there has been less social stigma attached to being the victim of a sex crime — meaning we're seeing fewer rapes, even as rapes are more likely to be reported. More interestingly, they've also taken place alongside the rise of the Internet, the medium that has done more than any other to mainstream and provide easy access to pornography, gambling, and a host of other vices. Somehow, society has managed to stay afloat.

Our allegedly sexualized culture hasn't had much effect in other areas, either. The divorce rate is at its lowest point in four decades. This is in part because people are waiting longer to get married. More women in the workforce means more women are waiting to get married. And they are getting married for the right reasons, not merely for financial security. It's hard to argue that society is worse off with strong marriages, even if that means fewer marriages over all.

— Life expectancy is up. In June, the Centers for Disease Control announced that in 2006 (the latest year for which data is available), Americans once again set a record for life expectancy. Men, women, blacks, whites — all can expect to live longer today than at any point in American history. Discrepancies in the average age of death between ethnic groups are narrowing, too. All of those things we're told need heavy regulation because they're potentially killing us — obesity, alcohol, coffee, sodium, pollution, stress, cell phones — aren't doing a very good job.

— We're beating our biggest killers. The same CDC report noted that mortality rates for eight of the 10 leading causes of death in America dropped in 2006. In fact, deaths from the two biggest killers — cancer and heart disease — have been in decline for a decade. Deaths from the third leading cause of death, stroke, are also down.

The latter was written by Radley Balko, a relatively credible commentator who just happened to post this piece on Fox News. He's also written for Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Playboy, TIME magazine, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Reason, and Worth magazine.