the Revision Division

CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: France: Algerians gone wild – again.

“This demonstrates the total failure of the immigration policy in our country,” complained Marine Le Pen. “It’s the refusal, expressed by a certain number of bi-nationals, of assimilation, that I especially believe in. It’s clearly the wish on the part of a rather large number of people to exhibit their preference for Algeria over France. The State must reclaim its authority. There is no country in the world that would agree to endure what we are enduring on our territory.”

When asked if ramadan would calm things down, she reacted strongly: “Must we wait for attacks during Algerian soccer matches, and hope, as if we were doing a rain dance, that ramadan will solve the growing problem of recurring acts of violence? No, it’s up to the State to solve the problem. We must end dual nationality, we must end immigration. We must end the automatic French nationality granted to those born on French territory.”

NO KIDDING? To Hold Senate, Democrats Rely on Single Women. “The decline of marriage over the last generation has helped create an emerging voting bloc of unmarried women that is profoundly reshaping the American electorate to the advantage, recent elections suggest, of the Democratic Party.”

Steve Sailer pointed this out in detail last year: Happy White Married People Vote Republican, So Why Doesn’t The GOP Work On Making White People Happy?

UK: 45,000 immigrants ‘cheated English tests’.

The BBC programme sent non-EU students – who were already in the UK legally – undercover.

They posed as bogus students with poor English, who wanted to remain in the UK to work illegally.

They were told they simply had to have their photograph taken at the test centre as proof they were there – while a “fake sitter” took the spoken and written English computer tests.

In other cases, exam invigilators were filmed reading out the correct answers to a multiple choice English language exam, allowing the class to complete the two-hour test in seven minutes.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, described the allegations as “very shocking”.

The test was introduced top curb the high numbers of people coming to Britain on student visas, but who went on to take low-skilled jobs.

ED WEST: The Left’s blind spot with Islam: opposing bigotry does not mean liking a religion.

The issue of Christian persecution has been ignored because the Left feels uncomfortable discussing Muslim-on-Christian violence, and Muslim bigotry generally. Muslims, as (generally) non-European minorities in the West, excite their need to protect the vulnerable. Yet outside of the West, the men of Islam are far from vulnerable or weak – quite the opposite.

And the problem for the Left is that once you look into religious freedom around the world it becomes very hard to sustain the idea that Islam is a tolerant faith, as they would like to believe.

TAKING A STAND: Packed Murrieta Town Hall Sounds Alarm On Illegal Immigrant Invasion.

Yesterday hundreds of protesters in Murrieta, California blocked buses carrying illegal immigrants from Texas.

The protesters converged Tuesday outside the Border Patrol facility in Murrieta.

The immigrant buses were forced to turn around.

Tonight hundreds of concerned Murrieta citizens packed a town hall meeting to discuss the illegal immigrant invasion.

CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: UK: “A Christian health worker has begun a legal challenge after being disciplined by the NHS for praying with a Muslim colleague.”

Victoria Wasteney, a senior occupational therapist in one of the country’s most racially diverse areas, was also accused of bullying the colleague after giving her a book about a Muslim woman who converts to Christianity.

In addition, senior managers told Miss Wasteney that it was inappropriate to invite the woman to a community sports day organised by her church.

The complaints led to Miss Wasteney being suspended on full pay for nine months.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: “If Fences Don’t Work, Why Is There One Around The White House?”

PEW: After decades of GOP support, Cubans shifting toward the Democratic Party.

PAUL BRUNO: Reform Math vs. Inquiry Science.

A few thoughts on the apparent similarities and differences: . . .

2. There is some extra pressure from administrators and districts to employ inquiry methods with students at the low end of the achievement distribution. When low-achieving students engage in inquiry activities it can appear to the untrained eye that they are “doing science” the way the highest-achieving students do.

3. Inquiry science, like reform math, lowers the absolute-performance bar for success. Since the emphasis is on “doing” science rather than “knowing” science, it quickly becomes unfair to grade kids on the basis of the rigor and plausibility of the science they’ve “done”. After all, the fewer facts you teach them, the more unreasonable it is to demand that they incorporate facts into their experimentation/discovery/etc.

WILLIAM M. BRIGGS: Casual Sex Is Good for You, Says New Biased Study.

Then came the wee p-values, garnered through “Hierarchical linear models”, with the result “higher sociosexuality was linked to a significantly higher likelihood of engaging in weekly casual sex”. That means those who said they wanted to have “causal” sex were more likely to have it.

That’s the main finding, dear readers.

Vrangalova also split participants into two groups, whether they scored high or low on the sexual desire questions. Inside the high and low sexuality were those who had and not have “causal” sex. For example, take those in the low sexuality group. Those with did not have “causal” sex had a mean 3.5 “self-esteem” score; those who had “causal” sex had a mean “self-esteem” score of 3.4. The difference did not give a wee p-value.

But in the high sexuality group, those with no sex had a mean score of 3.9, and those who had sex had a score of 4. This difference gave a wee p-value.

The same sort of thing was repeated for “life satisfaction”. The conclusion is not that narcissists answer questions consistently, but that “causal” sex boosts self-esteem and life satisfaction.

But only in those who are not in a long-term relationship, not married, not engaged, not living together, not worried about infidelity, are not likely to be males, not lazy, and who would sign up for a study of “causal” sex for a combination of monetary compensation, lottery prizes, and research credit.

NO. NEXT QUESTION? Do we really have a campus sexual assault ‘epidemic’? “The fact that the most recent rates of campus sexual assault in 2012 are both below the levels in 2001, 2002 and 2003, and just slightly above their 12-year averages, might suggest that the term ‘epidemic’ is an inaccurate and exaggerated description of the actual data on campus sexual assaults. For as much as we’ve constantly heard about a ‘campus sexual assault epidemic’ this year, I’ve never once seen any actual campus crime data presented to support such a fantastic claim.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Physical attractiveness means good health.

Lots of equalists these days claim that beauty is specific to culture . . .

As we saw recently, female beauty as traditionally defined is an indicator of intelligence, fertility, and the likelihood that a woman will bear intelligent children. And unfortunately for the cultural constructionists, men who live in a remote, indigenous community, Papua New Guinea, who presumably have never been exposed to Western media, consider an hourglass figure a crucial determinant of female beauty. So do blind men.

Worse news for the equalists: physical attractiveness is robustly associated with good health in both men and women.

SARAH HOYT: The Publishing Business Is In Crisis.

The publishers had total control on how a book would do. If they targeted you for bestseller, you’d become one, even if they had to fudge the numbers to do it. . . .

Then Amazon opened the market to self-publishing, and people could find things that they wanted to read that insulted neither their intelligence nor their political beliefs. . . .

However for real push, for real penetration of market, traditional publishing still held control. They could still make something a bestseller if they wanted to and pushed enough. Or at least so I thought. . . .

And then . . . I saw the walls tumble down. I saw the statue of Lenin dragged through the streets.

I saw Hillary’s book tank. . . .

The book will debut on the bestseller list, because that’s determined not by books bought but by “laydown”, i.e. how many books the publisher shipped. (Bet you didn’t know a book can be a “bestseller” without selling a single book.)

What you might not appreciate from the outside is how amazing, how impossible this is. They still have control over what ships (and therefore gets on the bestseller list for at least one week), they have control over the figures they show, they have control over publicity, they can strong-arm bookstores to stock a book and to push it. And you bet your bottom dollar they deployed all this in favor of Hillary.

And it tanked. It tanked so publicly, so visibly, it can’t be denied.

CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: UK: Christian suspended for bullying Muslim by giving her Christian book.

STUDY: All Employment Growth Since 2000 Went to Immigrants.

PETER FROST: Negotiating the gap. Four academics and the dilemma of human biodiversity.

This essay presents four academics—Richard Dawkins, Claude Lévi-Strauss, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides—and how they negotiated the gap between personal conviction and mainstream discourse. All four came to the conclusion that human populations differ not only anatomically but also in various mental and behavioral predispositions. These differences are statistical and often apparent only between large groups of people. But even a weak statistical difference can affect how a society will develop and organize itself. Human biodiversity is therefore a reality, and one we ignore at our peril.

Yet most academics do ignore it, their ignorance being either real or feigned. It is easy to forgive the truly ignorant. But what about the ones who know better? What’s their excuse? “I don’t have tenure yet.” “I’m not well enough known yet.” “I don’t have enough clout yet.” Some will just say: “Please come into my office. Others may hear us talking in the corridor.”

And so, among those who do know better, the common response is … no response. But what else is there to do? How does one go about saying something that is offensive to most people?

SMART DIPLOMACY: Biden to Germans: You are xenophobic.

He described three things the United States needs to do to “keep our edge” in the global economy. One of these priorities is passing comprehensive immigration reform . . .

“We have to pass an immigration bill,” Biden said, as quoted by the Washington Examiner, which also obtained a recording of the segment. “Look at Germany, look at the rest of the world. We’re the only non-xenophobic nation in the world that’s a major economy.”

Claims of xenophobia aside, is his economic point even right? See Steve Sailer’s post “Germany, U.S., Spain: Unemployment and Immigration”:

Why has Germany’s unemployment rate fallen 3 points since the end of 2007, while America’s is still 2 points higher? . . .

Germany’s population fell by about 100,000 (-0.1%) from 2000 to 2008. Germany used to have a lot of immigration from Turkey, but the country has been quietly cutting back on that as it turned out that the Turks quickly stopped working and went on welfare. . . .

In contrast, the population of the U.S. grew by about 21,800,000 from 2000 to 2008 (+7.8% in just 8 years). . . .

During the 2000 to 2008 period, in contrast to tightening-up Germany, the U.S. . . . focused on importing large numbers of Latin Americans.

The first article says that immigration to Germany has surged in the past few years. But much of that consists of fellow Europeans, not the Muslim Other. Plus, the Germans are not as free with welfare as other European states. See the WSJ article, “Immigration to Germany Surges in Wake of Euro-Zone Crisis” [$]:

Government data released Thursday showed immigration rose 13% to 1,226,000 last year, mainly due to an influx from Poland and crisis-hit southern European countries such as Italy and Spain. . . .

Chancellor Angela Merkel said in comments published Thursday that Germany doesn’t want to pay unemployment benefits to EU citizens who move to Germany for the sole purpose of looking for work.

“The EU isn’t a social-welfare union,” Ms. Merkel told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper.

What a novel idea. Allow people to come in who aren’t opposed to your culture and refuse to give them free money.

A THREAT TO BIG GOVERNMENT: How fathers teach children to work hard and believe in God.

Earlier: Fathers matter for religious transmission.

BE PROUD OF YOUR BODY — UNLESS YOU’RE THIN: Canada: Hudson’s Bay Company slammed for ‘Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ shirt.

The designer of the shirt, Canadian-born artist Christopher Lee Sauvé, defended his design.

In a Tumblr post Monday night, Sauvé said the T-shirt was not intended to be pro-anorexia, but rather the exact opposite.

By juxtaposing Moss’s quote with a nutritional label of zero calorie, Sauvé said the design is a protest against Moss’s saying and “the absurd remarks that occur in the fashion industry.”

So they’re all on the same page. It’s just a matter of disagreement about how precisely to go about shaming thin women.

See also: Warning women about being thin and not about being fat.

CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: Swine Flu Confirmed At Shelter For Unaccompanied Minors.

Related: Report: 90% of illegals skip immigration court appearances; 135,000 will go missing.

WE LOOKED AT THE DATA: Average IQ of students by college major and sex ratio.

NOT A HERO, JUST OBSERVANT AND HUMOROUS: The person behind this fake Salon Twitter account is an American hero. Good headlines:

• “But mom, errands are gay”: The 10 year-old’s vile rant that proves what a homophobic Patriarchy we live under
• 8 ways to know if your fetus is going to be homophobic
• Nanoaggressions: Science reveals structural oppression too small for human eyes
• Seven misconceptions about Stalin’s land reform

STEVE SAILER: There Are No Foreign Countries, Only Rebellious Provinces. From the AP article: “Vice President Joe Biden declared Tuesday that protecting gay rights is a defining mark of a civilized nation and must trump national cultures and social traditions.” Today’s imperialism might just be the stupidest imperialism in history.

UK: Study: Women ‘more aggressive to partners’.

Women are more likely than men to be controlling and aggressive towards their partners, a study has found. The idea that they are the gentler sex is a myth – at least as far as partners are concerned, according to psychologists. Far from the popular notion of women tending to be victims of “intimate partner violence” (IPV), they were more verbally and physically aggressive to their other halves than men, the findings showed. . . .

Dr Bates, who presented her findings at the British Psychological Society’s Division of Forensic Psychology annual meeting in Glasgow, said: “It wasn’t just pushing and shoving. Some people were circling the boxes for things like beating up, kicking, and threatening to use a weapon.

“In terms of high levels of control and aggression, there was no difference between men and women.”

She added: “The stereotypical popular view is still one of dominant control by men. That does occur but research over the last 10 to 15 years has highlighted the fact that women are controlling and aggressive in relationships too.

“A contributing factor could be that in the past women have talked about it more. The feminist movement made violence towards women something we talk about. Now there is more support for men and more of them are feeling comfortable coming forward.”

Earlier: US National Survey: more men than women victims of intimate partner violence.

Related: Unprecedented Domestic Violence Study Affirms Need to Recognize Male Victims.

GOOD TO KNOW: Prehistoric Poop Reveals Neanderthals Ate Plants.

For the new study, researchers looked for telltale biomarkers in bits of fossilized feces (often called coprolites) found in the soil at El Salt, an archaeological site in Alicante, Spain, which Neanderthals occupied at various times between 60,000 and 45,000 years ago.

All poop samples indicated that Neanderthals ate animals; evidence came in the form of coprostanol, a lipid created when the body metabolizes cholesterol — a molecule made by all animals. But two samples also had a dash of 5B-stigmastanol — a chemical produced when the gut breaks down phytosterol, a cholesterol-like compound that comes from plants. The researchers billed their study as the first direct evidence that Neanderthals had an omnivorous diet.

CZECH REPUBLIC: Govt Adviser Forced to Resign for Calling Disabled Babies “Monsters,” Saying They Should be Euthanized. At least he’s honest.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: FBI Techniques for Building Quick Rapport. From the top of the list:

Establish artificial time constraints.

Most people don’t mind having a conversation but they dread being trapped in an awkward one.

E.g. Hey I’m on my way out but ____.

THE WELFARE STATE AT WORK: Criminal offending as part of an alternative reproductive strategy: Investigating evolutionary hypotheses using Swedish total population data. “Convicted criminal offenders had more children than individuals never convicted of a criminal offense. Criminal offenders also had more reproductive partners, were less often married, more likely to get remarried if ever married, and had more often contracted a sexually transmitted disease than non-offenders. Importantly, the increased reproductive success of criminals was explained by a fertility increase from having children with several different partners.”

Gee, I wonder how these women suppose that they’ll care for their children in the absence of the criminal fathers?

PATRIOTISM CONFUSES SPORTS PRESS: Fedor Emelianenko doesn’t actively support female MMA — and this is somehow a faux pas. “I respect the girls who defend the country’s honor at the Olympics, in wrestling, boxing. But I do not support female MMA. A woman must take care of the house, raise her children and be feminine. There a lot of different sports which help her in that, but MMA is not one of them.”

Those commenting on this just don’t get it: “It does seem odd that he’s OK with women wrestling and boxing but has a problem with combining the two into MMA.”

It only seems odd if you think that he arrived at his position in a vacuum. He’s expressing a pro-Russia sentiment. If his country looks good in the Olympics, that’s great. But Russia needs children. If female MMA distracts women from having and caring for children while contributing nothing to the nation’s glory, then why should Fedor support it?

Then there’s the idea that female MMA fighter Ronda Rousey might frown on Fedor for his comment. Big whoop. By the way, she’s already said that she wants to have 57 of his babies. But she can’t very well do that while fighting, can she?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Federal Octopus. “Government agencies are now eager to venture into areas well beyond their mandates. They will use any means necessary to further the careers of their executives, massage data to enhance the administration’s agenda, or simply abdicate their responsibility to enforce the law at all if it is found to be politically incorrect.”

MORE DE FACTO AMNESTY: US releases immigrant families, won’t say how many.

YOU DON’T SAY: IRS Admits Wrongdoing, to Pay $50,000 in Leaking of Marriage Group’s Tax Return.

DALROCK: ROCD: A clinical case of the Whispers.

Business Insider has a new article today titled How To Know If You Have The New Condition Called ‘Relationship OCD’. The article suggests the problem is rare, but what they are describing sounds like a clinical version of something I call the whispers, something our culture bombards women with on a daily basis.

I earlier excerpted the “whispers” post here.

While this is a defined disorder, it also describes pretty much every blog or magazine aimed at women in the western world. Seemingly every week there is a new Cosmo quiz to determine if your man is (still) the right man for you. Newspapers around the world warn women that they might be trapped in a semi happy marriage. Divorcedmoms.com has thoughtfully created a separate section just for moms Thinking About Divorce. This important resource warns women everywhere that they may be settling for less than they deserve in a relationship. The Huffington Post helpfully republished the same article to warn their own readers of this hidden danger. In another article divorcedmoms.com offers tips on deciding if you should divorce, including this nifty graphic.

I could go on at length, because entertainment aimed at women is drenched in this.

Related: UK: A third of women who are already married secretly admit they STILL haven’t found Mr Right… but most men say they have found perfect partner.

LIBERTARIANISM = OPEN BORDERS? “Brat’s victory is hardly a win for libertarianism.” So says a post on the “Students for Liberty” blog. So here’s the libertarian plan for America, according to such people:

Phase 1: Expand welfare rolls with the underclass of every third-world dump.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Libertopia.

COMPREHENSIVE: Victimization Whack-a-Mole.

Some people, in a word, cannot be satisfied. Trying to please them is like playing whack-a-mole: their dissatisfaction has no remedy. You’re sure you’ve bopped it on the head, but there it pops up again, and then over there, and over there… is there any way to nab it once and for all?

In our blank-slatist world, where all groups are presumed equal, puzzling ‘performance gaps’ leave some feeling outraged. Rather than shake their fist at Mother Nature (the real source of disparities), they continue to demand action that they are sure will Close the Gap. When it doesn’t, the target changes. Then changes again. And again, and again… The endless merry-go-round of recriminations and demands is a clue that what they seek cannot be found. Has all logic gone down the mole hole? Pick up your mallet and follow us…

JUST IN CASE YOU WANTED TO KNOW: Here Are The Most Liberal [sic] And Most Conservative Towns In Each State. Interestingly, “liberal” is defined here as supporting universal abortion, gun control, and higher taxes, and worrying about “climate change.” No mention of “transgender” “rights,” so I’m skeptical about the results.

WISHFUL THINKING: Senator Rand Paul’s Imaginary Libertarian Immigrants.

When Paul talks about what “immigrants are drawn to,” he does not cite to any research or even provide an anecdote. Neither he nor any other Republican can name a single city or state that became more conservative/market-oriented because of mass immigration or racial pandering. Even more disturbing, these people can’t name a single conservative party in any Western nation that has won more elections because of non-Western immigration. Paul’s only citation is “nation of immigrants.”

That’s part of the problem with Republican wishful thinking on immigration “reform”: no facts, no reasoning, nothing but blind faith that the GOP can make the ultimate racial pander pay off. Paul is taking the exact same unrealistic, PC approach to immigration that Eric Cantor took.

AUSTRALIA: Law intended to help women get light sentences for killing men will be scrapped because it ended up helping men, too.

Defensive homicide laws meant to help battered women but which have been hijacked by thugs and drug addicts will be scrapped under sweeping justice reforms. . . .

Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark said draft laws would enter State Parliament this week because defensive homicide had “failed to work as intended”.

“Instead it is wide open to offenders using it to escape full responsibility where they ­deserve to be convicted of murder,” Mr Clark said.

RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Islam’s ‘Protestant Reformation’.

In order to prevent a clash of civilizations, or worse, Islam must reform. This is the contention of many Western peoples. And, pointing to Christianity’s Protestant Reformation as proof that Islam can also reform, many are optimistic.

Overlooked by most, however, is that Islam has been reforming. What is today called “radical Islam” is the reformation of Islam. And it follows the same pattern of Christianity’s Protestant Reformation.

WALMART critiques a New York Times hit piece. More businesses need to respond like this.

FOIA DOCUMENTS REVEAL Obama White House Trying To Coordinate With Muslim Brotherhood – Embarrassingly Misjudged Ideology and Intent of Muslim Brotherhood in 2010, 2011, 2012.

Remember, back in 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was continually saying “we’re not sure who these rebels are“. She said they were continuing to try and identify their ideology. What these FOIA Documents reveal is that both President Obama and Secretary Hillary Clinton knew *EXACTLY* who the “rebels” were when they chose to support them.

The administration had been studying them (Presidential Study Directive 11 – 2010) for over a year and even had meetings with them prior to the eruption of the Libyan crisis on Feb 14th of 2011. In the mind of the administration the Muslim Brotherhood was “moderate“.

TAQIYYA, Vatican-Style.

A Muslim imam invited to participate in last weekend’s “prayer for peace” event at the Vatican went off-script and asked Allah to help him gain victory over the unbelievers. . . .

The top management at the Vatican (CEO Francis and the Board of Cardinals) were taken by surprise by what happened, since the translated script they were handed in advance by the imam contained nothing controversial. And none of them understood the spoken Arabic.

However, someone lower down in the pecking order did understand Arabic, and called public attention to the imam’s words.

Whoops.

DOG BITES MAN: University of Arkansas Bans Washington Free Beacon from Clinton Archives.

This isn’t the first time that a university library has intervened to prevent damaging information on a (potential) Democratic presidential candidate. In 2008, the University of Illinois at Chicago intervened to keep Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, from doing research on Barack Obama . . .

The Weekly Standard’s own Daniel Halper was shut out of the University of Nebraska-Omaha when trying to research Chuck Hagel after he was nominated by Obama for Secretary of Defense . . .

It appears as if university administrators make a habit of ignoring their commitment to open inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge to help Democrats.

What commitment?

MISUNDERSTANDING CAUSATION: Study: Corruption increases and distorts spending by U.S. states.

“Policy makers should pay close attention that public resources are not used for private gains of the few but rather distributed effectively and fairly for various purposes,” they write, arguing that reducing corruption can be a tool to restrain spending as when states struggle to balance their budgets. . . .

In addition to spending more than expected, corrupt states spent more on government activities and services that are susceptible to manipulation for private gain and less on other activities.

Spending isn’t a result of corruption. Corruption is a result of spending. If officials were constrained by law, voters, and necessity to spend on essential services only, then there would be little room for corruption. The scope of government determines the potential scope of corrupt activity.

WE LOOKED AT THE DATA: Honor Killings and Husband Killings: What They Won’t Tell You.

Honor killing is actually a misnomer because there is no English equivalent for the word Namous. It has been translated as “honor,” but the two words do not carry the same connotation. Namous is committed out of a behavioral propensity found in some portions of Islamic cultures called Gheirat, which we will not bother explaining here but will mention that it is enabled and maintained by women too. Anyway, men being killed, lynched, or beaten for matters relating to Namous, or honor, as mentioned earlier, comprise almost all of the victims. So when I first saw the media reports representing honor killings as gender-based violence against women, I was surprised. Later I found out that the term “honor killings,” unlike its original phrase Ghatl haye Namousi, has been defined by the UN and feminists to exclude the overwhelming majority of its victims: men, many of whom were murdered by other men at the behest of women or sometimes directly by women. How did they do that?

Honor killings occur when the family members of a woman kill a man for matters violating honor; on very rare occasions, it has been seen that some families have killed their own female member. So here is the key contrast:

Male victims of honor killings are not family members of the perpetrators, whereas female victims of honor killings are family members of the perpetrators.

Guess what? Feminists have placed honor killings as a subcategory of familial killings! There you go: all male victims have simply evaporated by a single move of mental gymnastics.

The rest is quite interesting.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Magnesium improves athletic performance.

UK: Psychologist claims under-fives are damaged by ‘sleepovers’ with their separated fathers.

Ian Maxwell, of the charity Families Need Fathers, said Ms Leach’s argument was “worrying” for fathers and went against “common sense”. “The bond between fathers and children is just as important.” “The idea [of] maternal bonds being the strongest goes back to classic attachment theory, and I think we’ve moved on quite considerably since then – and also the involvement of fathers in their children’s lives has also developed quite considerably.”

This was a view echoed by Dr Linda Nielsen, writing recently for the American Psychological Association. She said that arguments in favour of mother-only parenting only appealed to people who rely on the outdated argument that “females have a maternal instinct or neurological structures in their brains that better equip them to bond and communicate with infants”.

Ms Leach strongly defended her position last night, arguing that “being a father is not a reward for good behaviour”.

Earlier: Australia: A belief that children under three should not stay overnight with their separated or divorced father has underpinned our family law system for years. Has it all been a mistake?

Also: Paul Raeburn: Do fathers matter? A connection that’s deeper than we realize.

AARON CLAREY: The Real Threat of the Patent Office.

What inventor or entrepreneur is EVER going to trust the patent office, let alone come up with a new invention ever again?

Oh, I know, I know, big companies and big Pharma and big chemical companies will still apply for their patents and copyrights, but the next Edison, the next Gates, the next Ford? If they’re conservative (or at least capitalists which they usually are) why should they trust the patent office now with their sweat and toil?

GLASS CEILING: ABC producer who changed gender [sic] three times is fired weeks after latest transformation for ‘performance-related issues’.

The father-of-three explained to colleagues that she [sic] believed her [sic] gender [sic] mix-up was linked to her [sic] mother giving her [sic] oestrogen as a child to prolong a childhood acting career.

Ennis said she [sic] ended up developing breasts and thinking as a woman.

Soon afterwards, the producer separated from wife Wendy after 17 years. Then three months after revealing her [sic] new identity to colleagues, the senior ABC employee returned to work as Don and claimed to have suffered from ‘transient global amnesia’.

Ennis said he had believed it was 1999 and thought that his wife had tricked him into dressing up as a woman. . . .

In May, 49-year-old Ennis became Dawn again. She [sic] was let go from the company soon afterwards.

The attempt on the part of the press to play along with such people and use the (im)proper pronouns can have ridiculous results: “Zot L. Szurgot allegedly walked out of her house naked, turned to five of her neighbors and started wagging her penis.” [sic]

“THE FLOOD OF STUDIES claiming women would improve corporate performance are flawed and based on bad science.”