What I Learned by Being a Migrant Sex Worker in Japan
Rhacel Salazar Parrenas for Bloomberg (Part 1 and Part 2):
In the clubs, men bond over their ability to objectify hostesses with no admonishment. In the place where I worked, customers usually commented on the appearance of the hostess assigned to their table immediately after being introduced to her, expressing either approval or disapproval, and in some cases rejecting her, telling the club manager to replace her with someone more attractive. Sometimes customers would request a hostess with a specific physical feature, notably large breasts.
I often heard customers describe me as “futote,” meaning fat, and “kuroi,” meaning dark. I could not retort because customers patronize hostess clubs not only to avoid rejection but to experience male superiority. Hostesses can express only positive comments about clients. As one of my co-workers observed of our clients, “No one wants to listen to them. No one tells them they are good-looking. No one admires them. That is why they go to the club.” Hostesses try to generate sales by bolstering the masculinity of their customers.
There is no great secret here. The average male does not visit this type of establishment out of some underlying desire to objectify women. Rather, men are looking for attention they are unable to receive elsewhere.
These bars make it easy for a man to walk in and obtain immediate gratification through attention, something they would otherwise have to spend a great deal of effort on. It is almost like the fast-food equivalent to picking up chicks, except in this case the dream ceases once the man exits the premises.
The bottom line is that most men are merely looking for the idea of meeting a girl. It has nothing to do with objectification, feeling superior or anything evil. Instead, it is merely a way to have an enjoyable few hours with a companion who provides the attention otherwise unattainable elsewhere. In rare cases this involves sex, but mostly it involves social drinking and conversation. It is patently harmless for both the worker and the customer.
Like with everything else in life, the 99% are persecuted for the crimes and stupidity of the 1%.
At a Tokyo radiation hotspot, weirdness abounds
From BoingBoing:Officials were worried this week, when they discovered a radiation hotspot in Tokyo, kicking off readings as high as 3.35 microsieverts per hour. (For context, a dental x-ray is about 5 microsieverts. This wasn’t a massive amount of radiation, but it was concerning. The AP reports that readings of that level have been found in the Fukushima evacuation zone.)
The good news: This has nothing to do with Fukushima. It turned out to be an extremely localized hotspot, and officials found the real source nearby.
The bad news: The real source turned out to be something the AP is describing as “mystery bottles” stored under someone’s house. No. Really.
Now that is some really crazy shit. I know people are freaking big time about these weird localized hotspots. To find one not caused by Fukushima is pretty distressing. It should be interesting to see how the local government deals with this.
Beyond psychological adaptations and mechanisms, scientists have discovered neurological explanations for what many interpret as evidence of divine existence. Canadian psychologist Michael Persinger, who developed what he calls a “god helmet” that blocks sight and sound but stimulates the brain’s temporal lobe, notes that many of his helmeted research subjects reported feeling the presence of “another.” Depending on their personal and cultural history, they then interpreted the sensed presence as either a supernatural or religious figure. It is conceivable that St. Paul’s dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus was, in reality, a seizure caused by temporal lobe epilepsy.
Science and religion: God didn’t make man; man made gods by J. Anderson Thomson and Clare Aukofer in the Los Angeles Times.
This is absolutely interesting. I suggest reading the entire article before commenting. Chances are your natural assumption about the content is incorrect. (via Chris)
Listening to GOP Presidential candidates talk about science is like listening to children talk about sex: They know it exists, they have strong opinions about what it might mean, but they don’t have a clue what it’s actually about.
But it’s not just a phenomenon of the right. It’s a phenomenon of everybody, including those who get their news from the mainstream media. It’s what happens when reporters insist that every story about climate change has to include a quote from at least one or two skeptics to “balance out” the other scientists. Is it any wonder that the public is so wildly misinformed?
Views Differ on Shape of Earth, Climate Edition.
Is it any wonder why people from other countries laugh at Americans like we are misinformed idiots?
So it’s now highly likely that the presidential candidate of one of our two major political parties will either be a man who believes what he wants to believe, even in the teeth of scientific evidence, or a man who pretends to believe whatever he thinks the party’s base wants him to believe.
Welcome to get-elected-at-any-cost, 21st Century America style.
The M.M.R. vaccine doesn’t cause autism, and the evidence is overwhelming that it doesn’t,” Dr. Ellen Wright Clayton, the chairwoman of the panel, assembled by the Institute of Medicine, said in an interview. She was referring to a combination against measles, mumps and rubella that has long been a focus of concern from some parents’ groups.
I’m not a meteorologist. All I know is 90 percent of the scientists say climate change is occurring. If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we’d listen to them.
If you’ve ever been convinced by a salesperson that you truly wanted a product, done something too instinctively, or made choices that seemed entirely out of character, then you’ve had an idea planted in your mind. Here’s how it’s done.
Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated the prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If one testifies for the prosecution against the other (defects) and the other remains silent (cooperates), the defector goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act?
This 8 month old baby was born deaf, watch the moment as his cochlear implant is activated and he hears sound for the first time, and his mother’s voice.
The facts of schizophrenia are so peculiar, in fact, that they have led Torrey and a growing number of other scientists to abandon the traditional explanations of the disease and embrace a startling alternative. Schizophrenia, they say, does not begin as a psychological disease. Schizophrenia begins with an infection.
The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to the situation in which less competent people rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence: because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.
Maybe the allure for guys is they want to live the life of a male porn star. Hate to say it but they’re not the studs you think they are. Kira says all the men are on Viagra so they can perform. They even have to turn down sex in their personal lives because they have to “save it” for film. That’s crazy talk! That’s like winning the lottery but never being able to spend the money.
