13 March 2010: PM

Olivia is here! Note: Chicago Midway Airport was relatively uncrowded; little if any lines at the counters and almost no trouble getting through security.

Posts
Education You can’t make this up:

Like most colleges, my college uses an automatic plagiarism checker for all assignments. When I see an assignment, it comes with a report from Turnitin.com, which gives me a percentage of non-original content. Per the sales-team-I-mean-administration, anything below 25% is acceptable, anything above warrants a second look. If I suspect a student of plagiarizing, I am to forward the matter to an office that deals directly with this.

What’s the problem, you ask?

Let me tell you a little bit about Frank the Fuckhead. He has turned in three assignments. Each had a originality score between 25% and 45%. Each time, I found that he had copied large chunks of information from the Internet. The first time, I gave him an F and let him resubmit. He resubmitted the exact. same. thing. I turned him over to the office meant to deal with the matter. They, in turn, admonished me for not being “student centered.”

This is not as far fetched as it sounds.

Animal Camouflage via Conservation Report
The latest.

My all time favorite.

Statistics and science Perhaps the headline is sensationalistic but the article is interesting reading. Here is a bit of it:

Statistical significance is a phrase that every science graduate student learns, but few comprehend. While its origins stretch back at least to the 19th century, the modern notion was pioneered by the mathematician Ronald A. Fisher in the 1920s. His original interest was agriculture. He sought a test of whether variation in crop yields was due to some specific intervention (say, fertilizer) or merely reflected random factors beyond experimental control.

Fisher first assumed that fertilizer caused no difference — the “no effect” or “null” hypothesis. He then calculated a number called the P value, the probability that an observed yield in a fertilized field would occur if fertilizer had no real effect. If P is less than .05 — meaning the chance of a fluke is less than 5 percent — the result should be declared “statistically significant,” Fisher arbitrarily declared, and the no effect hypothesis should be rejected, supposedly confirming that fertilizer works.

Fisher’s P value eventually became the ultimate arbiter of credibility for science results of all sorts — whether testing the health effects of pollutants, the curative powers of new drugs or the effect of genes on behavior. In various forms, testing for statistical significance pervades most of scientific and medical research to this day.

But in fact, there’s no logical basis for using a P value from a single study to draw any conclusion. If the chance of a fluke is less than 5 percent, two possible conclusions remain: There is a real effect, or the result is an improbable fluke. Fisher’s method offers no way to know which is which. On the other hand, if a study finds no statistically significant effect, that doesn’t prove anything, either. Perhaps the effect doesn’t exist, or maybe the statistical test wasn’t powerful enough to detect a small but real effect.

13 March 2010

No working out today; longer swim tomorrow? My calf continues to seize up and ache at night; it feels ok during the day.

Posts (no particular order)

President Obama talks about education.

Humor:

(hat tip: Legal Satyricon)

Alan Keyes: I admit that I kind of like him; he seems to specialize in defending impossible to defend positions. I admit that I enjoy hearing him speak. Here he tries to argue that people are normalizing homosexuality in an effort to make Christianity go extinct. Someone made a comment: “Keyes is such an optimist!”

Speaking of nutbags
I sometimes think that only the United States is stuck with moronic people in its legislatures. That isn’t the case. Here, you see British members of Parliament pushing for homeopathic remedies to be covered by their National Health Service (I know..some Democrats, including one that I like, have pushed for such nonsense here).

Now that we are on the topic of healthcare

Paul Krugman: is optimistic. And yes, much of the negative stuff you are hearing about it is bunk.

Representative Alan Grayson: pushing for “Medicare buy-ins” for all. Ok, confession time: I like to see this idea, but any time someone says “gee, my bill is only 2, 3 or 4 pages long” I know that it really is a “for show” effort. Legislation is complicated because it is the law of the land, and law has to deal with a ton of contingencies, “what ifs”, and the like.

Our local paper: slams the hypocrisy of the current process. Sure it tries to come off as “even handed” but really gets to the point that Republicans are against reconciliation unless they are the ones using it:

Sometimes we wonder if election to Congress comes with an honorary – make that dishonorary – degree in hypocrisy.

The latest example has Capitol Hill Republicans in a conniption over Democrats threatening to use the parliamentary procedure known as “reconciliation” – which requires 51 votes rather than the 60 necessary to kill a filibuster – to pass an amended health care bill in the Senate. Democrats no longer have 60 votes.

“You’re talking about the exact opposite of bipartisan,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-New Hampshire. “You’re talking about running over the minority, putting them in cement, and throwing them in the Chicago River. … Using reconciliation in this manner on this type of an issue would do fundamental harm … to the institution of the Senate. I mean, why have a Senate? … You might as well go to a unicameral body. Be like Canada.”

My, what a difference five years makes.

Isn’t this the same Judd Gregg who in 2005, when Democrats complained about Republicans’ ultimately unfulfilled threat to use reconciliation to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, labeled their laments “inappropriate” and said, “We are using rules of the Senate here. Is there something wrong with majority rules? I don’t think so”? Why, it sure looks like him.

Meanwhile, we don’t recall Sen. John McCain objecting so emphatically to the process he now believes will produce “cataclysmic effects” when it was being used for the welfare reform legislation he supported back in 1996, or even for the legislation he did not support, specifically the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. We do remember him telling the Heritage Foundation a year ago that, while he was not fond of the practice, “I fully recognize that Republicans have in the past engaged in using reconciliation to further the party’s agenda. … The groundwork has been laid.”

Likewise we don’t register former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist ever calling reconciliation “arcane” and “never used” back when it was helping Republicans pass welfare reform, which we’d argue was “major” and “systemic,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s recent assertions to the contrary. Was it the “nuclear option” then for Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah? “If they exercise that tool, it’s going to be infinitely more difficult to bridge the partisan divide,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe, the Maine Republican. What, like erasing partisanship is possible to begin with?

We’d acknowledge that reconciliation was originally intended for smaller, narrower purposes, but in fact it has been used for some significant measures – to cut and raise taxes, to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program, to give Ronald Reagan his expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, to create the COBRA health insurance option for departing employees. It has been invoked 22 times since 1980, two-thirds of those by Republicans. When reconciliation bills have been signed into law, nearly three-quarters of those signatures have come from GOP presidents.

I’ll say it clearly: we (the Democrats) won the last election. We get to try. You had your chance and did nothing. If the reforms flop, you’ll win the next elections and then get to undo it and put in what you think will work better.

Economy Robert Reich (from the “the stimulus should have been a whole lot bigger” camp) isn’t impressed.

Part of the perceived growth in GDP is due to rising government expenditures. But this is smoke and mirrors. The stimulus is reaching its peak and will be smaller in months to come. And a bigger federal debt eventually has to be repaid.

So when you hear some economists say the current recovery is following the traditional path, don’t believe a word. The path itself is being used to construct the GDP data.

Look more closely and the only ones doing better are the people and private-sector institutions at the top. Many of America’s biggest companies are sitting on huge amounts of cash right now, but that says nothing about the health of the U.S. economy. Companies in the Standard&Poor 500 stock index had sales of $2.18 trillion in the fourth quarter, up from $2.02 trillion last year, and their earnings tripled. Why? Mainly because they’re global, and selling into fast-growing markets in places like India, China, and Brazil.

America’s biggest companies are also showing fat profits and productivity gains because they continue to slash payrolls and cut expenditures. Alcoa, for example, had $1.5 billion in cash at the end of last year, double what it had on hand at the end of 2008. Sounds terrific until you realize how it did it. By cutting 28,000 jobs – 32 percent of workforce – and slashed capital expenditures 43 percent.

Firms in S&P 500 are now holding a whopping $932 billion in cash and short-term investments. And they can borrow money cheaply. Corporate bond sales are brisk. So far in 2010, big U.S. corporations have issued $195.2 billion of debt, excluding government-guaranteed bonds. Does this spell a recovery? It all depends on what the big companies are doing with all this cash. In fact, they’re doing two things that don’t help at all.

First, they’re buying other companies. (Walgreen last month spent $618 million for New York drugstore chain Duane Reade; Bank of New York Mellon, $2.3 billion for PNC Financial Services; Monster, $225 million for jobs.com; Diamond Foods, $615 million for Kettle Foods.) This buying doesn’t create new jobs. One of the first things companies do when they buy other companies is fire lots of people who are considered “redundant.” That’s where the so-called merger efficiencies and synergies come from, after all.

The second thing big companies are doing with all their cash is buying back their own stock, in order to boost their share prices. There were 62 such share buy-backs in February, valued at $40.1 billion. We’re witnessing the biggest share buyback spree since Sept 2008. The major beneficiaries are current shareholders, including top executives, whose pay is linked to share prices. The buy-backs do absolutely nothing for most Americans.

Bottom line: people still don’t have money to spend and, while job losses have stabilized, we need to be creating jobs and the job creators (small businesses) don’t have the money to create them.

Note that the “inflection point” of the current “job loss” curve is right when the stimulus was enacted. This is where the graph changes concavity.

March 12, 2010 (later)

Workout notes
Morning: swim, 2200 yards. 500 warm up (slow!), 500 of drill/swim (fins), 5 x (alt 25 side, 25 free) on the 2:10 (last two were on the 2), 10 x 50 (25 free, 25 back) on the 1:05, 2 x 100 IM on the 3 (1:59, 1:52).

Note: for the first 1500 yards, I was the only male. There was my favorite swimmer (dark blue suit, slightly Rubenesque…in a good way) and a slightly faster woman in a blue suit, and some snowflake in a bikini. Later a “Tarzan style” male snowflake showed up.

Lunch: weights (to make up for tomorrow’s workout):
Bench press (barbell) 10 x 135, 10 x 155, 10 x 165, 4 x 175
Military presses 4 x 95, 3 x 95, 7 x 85
Curls 3 sets
Pull ups: 10, 10, 7
Yoga leg lifts: 3 sets of 20
Dumbbells: 10 x 30 curl, 10 x 45 military, 10 x 70 bench press.
pull downs: 3 sets
Yoga head stand: 5+ minutes. Teased Wendy (psychology professor) who was walking on the track.
I also got to encourage Sam who is fighting cancer; he got in 1.25 miles on the track (running and walking).

The whole workout took about 45 minutes; it doesn’t look like much but it took something out of me.

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12 March 2010 AM: Skepticism can be overdone

Injury notes: Night aches are becoming my steady companion, but I get rid of them if I remember to sleep with my right knee bent. It is weird: it needs to be bent but not all of the way; doing “child pose” in yoga is painful so I do down dog instead:

See how deeply bent her knees are? It is painful for me to do that but it is also for me to keep a straight leg for too long of a period of time.

I’ll go to the pool this morning and lift over lunch hour.

Days of old:

Yes, I remember watching The Banana Splits:

That takes me back a while…

Skepticism There is a fine line between being skeptical enough to not be lead around by the nose and being distrustful of everything that one doesn’t understand.

Here is what I mean: I’ve talked about the case in which a genetics professor caught heat because he claimed that home-school materials that taught creationism were teaching lies to kids. If you read some of the e-mail messages he posted or read some of the comments, you’ll see people with no science credentials at all thinking that they know as much about science as those who do science full time and have bona-fide scientific discoveries to their credit! Needless to say this is absurd.

You see this in other areas as well: Underwood Dudley’s book Mathematical Cranks is about people how produced nonsense and get their feelings hurt when established mathematicians don’t take them seriously. And yes, it includes some sections on formerly good mathematicians who descend into crackpottery; it happens in other areas as well.

You see this in the public sector as well: witness all of the people who think that “Obamacare” is unconstitutional. Uh, the President taught Constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School. Sure, other scholars/judges/lawyers might have a valid opinion on this question of constitutionality but few of the vocal critics have such a background.

I am NOT saying that one can’t say that they don’t like the policy or that the policy is a bad idea and should be defeated. Dissent IS patriotic, even now.

I am not saying that I don’t have an opinion about a court decision (though I often read the opinion of other experts to learn more, like this one.) But I don’t have the standing to say that Judge so and so was wrong on his/her ruling as to whether this law met this standard; I can and will say “I like this” or “I don’t like that” or “we need to get President Obama a second term so he can pick good Supreme Court Justices…that is, the kind of justice that I like”.

Yes, I despise Justice Antonin Scalia. But I’d never accuse him of making an elementary error in one of his rulings; I might mutter something about him being a right winger. But I accept that he is highly intelligent and one of the world’s leading experts on Constitutional law.

Again, I am not saying that one shouldn’t be skeptical of, say, what a politician says (either party). It is fine to fact check and to verify; in fact it is a good thing to do. But please, don’t go around thinking that reading a few pop-books on a subject makes you an equal to an expert on a complicated area like science.

I think that part of the problem is that most people aren’t experts at anything and therefore aren’t aware of the vast gulf between what they know and what an expert knows.

Other topics

Do you want to know where President Obama is donating his Nobel Peace Prize money? Go here and find out.

Question: why is it ok for scientists to investigate paranormal claims but not “religious miracle” claims? Frankly, I find it interesting that certain kinds of religious miracles never seem to happen.

Got an overdue book or DVD? Watch out; that might get you landed in jail!

11 March 2010 (noon)

Workout notes
AM: yoga with Ms. V.

4000 yards:
1000 in 17:07, 5 x 200 on the 3:30 (3:14, 13, 12, 11, 12), 500 drill/swim (fins), 10 x (25 fly, 25 free) on 1, 10 x (25 free, 25 back) 5 on 1:05, 5 on 1:00, 100 paddle, 100 swim, 100 paddle, 200 swim (8:19); lady in the next lane wouldn’t let me get ahead.

Posts

Glen Beck is after me.

Health care reform: Rep. Bart Stupack really doesn’t have as much sway as he says.

11 March 2010

Injury notes Yesterday was a good day (so I thought) but last night it ached in the calf area and woke me up. I had taken 2 NSAIDS (12 hour) prior to going to sleep; I had to get up and walk around a bit. The injury hates being still for a long period of time. Of course, it rained heavily and this might be partly the usual “change of weather” ache.

Health care reform
Jill Lawrence provides a list of common misconceptions about the current Senate bill:

Obviously, it is your perfect right to oppose what Obama and Democrats are trying to do. And there are legitimate reasons to do so. Maybe you think the government shouldn’t be in the business of trying to make sure all Americans have health coverage. Maybe you think that would be nice, but we can’t afford it. Maybe you oppose raising any taxes or fees to help finance changes in the health care system, or you think any savings we can wring out of it should be used for other priorities.

Yet these are not always the reasons readers offer for their (sometimes ALL-CAPS, often vitriolic) opposition — as anyone can see in the comments sections of every column I write about health care. Here are some of the charges and claims, and why I think they are not the right reasons to oppose the health overhaul before Congress:

She goes on to list some common misconceptions. Here are a couple:

3. It is being “rammed through.” There’s a 100-year history of failed presidential attempts to achieve universal health coverage. The topic was discussed at length throughout the 2007-2008 presidential campaign. Since last January, it has consumed 15 months of hearings, legislating and debate in Congress. The House passed its bill in November and the Senate, by a 60-40 super-majority, passed its version in December. Take your pick — a century, three years, 15 months — but this doesn’t meet any definition of “ramming.”

4. Reconciliation is “ramming” AND cheating. Reconciliation is a Senate budget process instituted 30 years ago. Since reconciliation bills can’t be filibustered, they need only 51 votes to pass — so everybody uses them to get things done. A chart of 15 major reconciliation initiatives in last weekend’s New York Times shows that Republicans have used the process many more times than Democrats. And we’re not talking small ball. Republican presidents have signed reconciliation bills that, among other things, cut welfare benefits, expanded health coverage, raised taxes, reduced taxes and overhauled the student aid system. In this case, reconciliation will be used to amend a bill that’s already passed the Senate with 60 votes. Cataclysmic, as Sen. John McCain put it? I think not.

Creationist Fail Jerry Coyne continues to attract creationist parents and advocates to his blog. The interesting thing is that these people see themselves as either being clever skeptics or being informed; witness this comment:

It’s quite intriguing to me watching a supposedly intellectual dialogue degrade into comments like “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again … these “parents” who buy into the B.S. of creationism in whatever form and deny evolution are child abusers plain and simple, as well as being ignorant, knuckle-dragging miscreants ! It must in part be genetic … stupid is as stupid does !”

Nothing quite smacks of a lack of solid argument as name-calling. Whether you are pro or con in any dialogue, such feeble attempts at degradation simply make one question the solidness of the intellectual foundation of the speaker.

Having followed this thread (essentially accidentally) for the first time, I had hoped for some degree of rational discourse.

For instance, questions such as there being no a-priori evidence that led to Einstein’s “assumption” about the speed of light, Bohr’s “assumption” about stable orbits, or Planck’s “assumption” that wonderfully quantified energy are disturbingly absent.

I would posit that such musings by paradigm-shattering men represent FAITH at the ultimate level. Yet we don’t decry the results of those assumptions. Nor do we argue vigorously against them without having a GENUINE knowledge of the subtleties of their arguments.

I’m also somewhat surprised at the lack of discussion about irreducible complexity or even intelligent design. Of course that lack likely arises from the same aggressive defensiveness held to by many evolutionists. Or perhaps the confidence of cliche-driven evolutionists isn’t adequate to present logical counter-arguments?

Speaking as a teacher of both physics and chemistry (forty-six years in public school, private school and university) I’m also somewhat perplexed by the glaring lack of any “mechanism” explaining the transition from one species to another, even at the mono-cellular level. Maybe I’ve just not Googled the right places, and if any of you could direct me to such explanations, I would savor the opportunity to read those explanations.

Even a theory as abstract yet functional as quantum theory proposes actual mechanisms in transitioning from one state to another. I often wonder why highly evangelistic evolutionists don’t attempt the same.

I agree with some of the posts here that there are many in the creationist community who are as guilty of name-calling and “other-view” ignorance as some of the verbally violent evolutionists and atheists who post here.

Oh, and speaking of the home schooling syndrome that seemed to have started all this… when I observe the continuing decline of critical thinking in students today and their mind-numbing dependence on EEDs (Electronic Enjoyment Devices) I have to commend those who undertake the daunting task of doing the home school thing.

In fact, in my university teaching, several of my students have come from the home school ranks. I have yet to find one who isn’t intelligent, knowledgeable, curious, unafraid of debate… even fully socialized.

Anyway, as my octogenarian Uncle Gord used to say, “Fight the fight, keep the faith.”

And might I add, whichever side you are on. Listen, debate at a high level, and never be afraid to go where logic leads.

As is sometimes said, “a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing”. Of course, creationism and intelligent design are not valid scientific theories; you’ll find them nowhere in major labs or science departments (except at a few fundamentalist sectarian colleges).

I am not a “blog-hit” slut.

There is no way I’d post something about “Raquel Welch’s metal-lined black satin bustier” just to get blog hits.
Really.

10 March 2010 (AM)

Workout notes Weights: I mixed all of these exercises up (different order) but the totals were: bench press (barbell) 10 x 135, 10 x 160, 5 x 170
Military press (dumbbell) 10 x 45, 10 x 25
curls (dumbbell) 10 x 25, 7 x 30
pullups (two sets of 7)
yoga leg lifts (two sets of 20)
headstand 100 yoga breaths (3-3.5 minutes)
sun salutes (6)

Swimming: 2200 yards: slow 500 yard warm up, 10 x (25 drill, 25 swim with fins), 10 x (25 free, 25 back) on the 1:00 to 1:10, 10 x (25 side, 25 free) on the 1:05, 4 x 50 paddle.

Posts

see more Epic Fails

Perhaps this is a

Last night: Angela Davis spoke at Bradley. Her talk was disorganized and rambling; she made some plausible points (e. g. that prisons are very profitable for many, hence there is a disincentive to reduce their population and that many in prison are there for petty offenses).

But mostly she just smiled and soaked up adulation from her audience which mostly consisted of old hippies. This was NOT an intellectually stimulating event.

9 March 2010

Workout notes

AM: yoga with Ms. Vickie. I was distracted a bit. Afterward we ate breakfast together. She doesn’t like President Obama, but we get along anyway.

Lunch: 4000 yard swim:
1000 warm up in 17:15, 1000 in 16:11 (4:04, 4:03, 4:03, 4:01); I was pushed by my department chair in the last 250. Then 100 back, 500 of drill/swim (fins), 10 x 50 on the 1 (fist), 5 x 100 (alt 25 catch, 25 free) on the 2; missed the last one, 100 paddle, 100 free, 100 paddle, 100 free.

Note: my time for this 1000 was my second fastest over the past 10 years; only in September 2008 (14′th) did I go faster.

Posts
These will be all over the map!

Humor: exactly why is this a fail? I have to admit that this reminds me of my college days; one of my classmates (female, if you please) decided to teach me how to slow dance. Her dance position was tight; she started by sticking her toned leg between mine (she was on the gymnastics team) and I had the predictable male reaction. She just looked up at me and gave me a wicked “I gotcha” grin.

Frogs and Books This one is going on my list:

I just got my hands on a very interesting book for the younger set: it’s aimed at kids in grades 5-8, and it’s a description of the life and work of a real live scientist, someone who does both field and lab work, and studies development and the effects of environmental toxins on reproduction. The man is Tyrone Hayes at UC Berkeley, and the book is The Frog Scientist(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Pamela Turner. It’s excellent stuff — it humanizes the scientist and also does a very good job of letting kids see what scientists actually do in their research, and why they’re doing it. If you’ve got a young one who’s thinking about being a scientist when she or he grows up, you might want to grab this book as a little inspiring incentive.

Free speech issues: Someone who sent out an e-mail message which compared Michelle Obama to a chimp was fired:

The political fallout is continuing for a man who, as CEO of the Tennessee Hospitality Association, sent out an e-mail comparing first lady Michelle Obama to a chimpanzee.

On Monday, the association’s board voted unanimously to terminate its contract with Walt Baker. Baker did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Here was the photo:

Yes, given the type of position that he had, the board did the right thing. After all, free speech is about government censorship (e. g., the government can’t send him to jail for doing that, for example).

But I should point out that the history of African Americans in this country played a role; after all, many openly compared President Bush to a chimp as well:

Clearly there was no racist intent; in this country Black people were compared to chimps and NOT White people. Yes, this was meant to be tasteless.

Ironically, I’d be happy to have this above photo spread done with my photo instead of President Bush’s; the similarity between the faces that chimps make and the faces that humans make is fascinating. Note that I see nothing especially simian about President Bush; in fact *I* have a somewhat simian appearance.

Freedom of speech Christopher Hitchens reminds us of one of the best aspects of the United States: the First Amendment. The issue is the old “Muslims don’t like anti-Mohamed cartoons”. One one hand I can understand why the Muslims in these countries are upset as many of them do have anti-free speech laws (e. g., certain groups are protected, you can’t “deny the holocaust”, etc.) So the idea is “if they are protected, why not us?”

This demonstrates that well intentioned censorship can cause trouble. I am so grateful that I live in a free speech country!
And yes, it should be legal to criticize ANY idea, including religious ones.

Free Speech: is porn good for a society? Or is it at least harmless?

…what do the data say? Over the years, many scientists have investigated the link between pornography (considered legal under the First Amendment in the United States unless judged “obscene”) and sex crimes and attitudes towards women. And in every region investigated, researchers have found that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased.

It’s not hard to find a study population, given how widespread pornography has become. The United States alone produces 10,000 pornographic movies each year. The Free Speech Coalition, a porn industry–lobbying group, estimates that adult video/DVD sales and rentals amount to at least $4 billion per year. The Internet is a rich source, with 40 million adults regularly visiting porn Web sites, and more than one-quarter of regular users downloading porn at work. And it’s not just men who are interested: Nelsen/Net reports that 9.4 million women in the United States accessed online pornography Web sites in the month of September 2003. According to the conservative media watchdog group Family Safe Media, the porn industry makes more money than the top technology companies combined, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Amazon.
No correlation has been found between exposure to porn and negative attitudes towards women.

To examine the effect this widespread use of porn may be having on society, researchers have often exposed people to porn and measured some variable such as changes in attitude or predicted hypothetical behaviors, interviewed sex offenders about their experience with pornography, and interviewed victims of sex abuse to evaluate if pornography was involved in the assault. Surprisingly few studies have linked the availability of porn in any society with antisocial behaviors or sex crimes. Among those studies none have found a causal relationship and very few have even found one positive correlation.

Despite the widespread and increasing availability of sexually explicit materials, according to national FBI Department of Justice statistics, the incidence of rape declined markedly from 1975 to 1995. This was particularly seen in the age categories 20–24 and 25–34, the people most likely to use the Internet. The best known of these national studies are those of Berl Kutchinsky, who studied Denmark, Sweden, West Germany, and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. He showed that for the years from approximately 1964 to 1984, as the amount of pornography increasingly became available, the rate of rapes in these countries either decreased or remained relatively level. Later research has shown parallel findings in every other country examined, including Japan, Croatia, China, Poland, Finland, and the Czech Republic. In the United States there has been a consistent decline in rape over the last 2 decades, and in those countries that allowed for the possession of child pornography, child sex abuse has declined. Significantly, no community in the United States has ever voted to ban adult access to sexually explicit material. The only feature of a community standard that holds is an intolerance for materials in which minors are involved as participants or consumers. [...]

Michael Goldstein and Harold Kant found that rapists were more likely than nonrapists in the prison population to have been punished for looking at pornography while a youngster, while other research has shown that incarcerated nonrapists had seen more pornography, and seen it at an earlier age, than rapists. What does correlate highly with sex offense is a strict, repressive religious upbringing. Richard Green too has reported that both rapists and child molesters use less pornography than a control group of “normal” males.

My thoughts: if someone wants to ban pornography, they have the burden of proof to show that it is harmful; the null hypothesis is “no effect” and the burden of proof is to reject the null hypothesis.
Now I see no reason to reject the null hypothesis which means the alternative hypothesis (that there is an effect) is not accepted. Of course effects are either good ones or bad ones (or perhaps neutral ones).

So, this author is also correct (she makes a First Amendment argument for NOT banning pornography):

Interesting. And if you’ve been going around saying that increased availability of porn causes an increase in sex crimes (or at least, that it did through the 1990s; Diamond doesn’t cite more recent findings on this subject), maybe you should stop. But speaking of the difference between correlation and causation, isn’t it kind of a big leap from that to “More porn equals less rape”?

I mean, I haven’t read all of the studies and reports Diamond mentions with regard to this particular matter — mostly the work of “Berl Kutchinsky, who studied Denmark, Sweden, West Germany, and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s,” plus FBI Department of Justice statistics from 1975-1995 — but I’m guessing it would be awfully hard to control for every other thing that changed in a society over a decade or two. Off the top of my head, for instance, might it not be that increased feminism had something to do with it? Increased rape awareness? Or, I don’t know, increased numbers of hourlong crime dramas on TV? Increased use of the word “awesome”? Increased appreciation for Prince’s musical genius? A lot was happening back then.

She then talks about rapists and seems to not accept that sexual gratification plays any role in rape:

And to get there, one would have to assume that rape is about sexual gratification, not control and violence;

My question: is sexual gratification independent from control and violence in all people? Are you saying that there aren’t people who don’t “get off” on controlling others and being violent?