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In what may feel like a flashback to the porn wars of the '60s, a new study investigates the link between a country's relative gender equality and the degree of female "empowerment" in the X-rated entertainment it consumes. Researchers at the University of Hawaii focused on three countries in particular: Norway, the United States and Japan, which are respectively ranked 1st, 15th and (yikes) 54th on the United Nations' Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). To simplify their analysis, their library of smut was limited to explicit photographs of women "from mainstream pornographic magazines and Internet websites, as well as from the portfolios of the most popular porn stars from each nation." Then they set out to evaluate each image on both a disempowerment and an empowerment scale, using respective measures like whether the woman is "bound and dominated" by "leashes, collars, gags, or handcuffs" or "whether she has a natural looking body." Their hypothesis was that societies with greater gender equity will consume pornography that has more representations of "empowered women" and less of "disempowered women." It turned out the former was true, but, contradictory as it may sound, the latter was not. "While Norwegian pornography offers a wider variety of body types -- conforming less to a societal ideal that is disempowering to the average woman -- there are still many images that do not promote a healthy respect for women," the researchers explain. In other words, Norwegian porn showed more signs of female empowerment, but X-rated images in all three countries equally depicted women in demeaning positions and scenarios. This, the researchers surmise, "suggests that empowerment and disempowerment within pornography are potentially different constructs." So, gender equality is accompanied by sexual interest in a broader range of beauty types but not a decrease in porn's infantilization of females, use of dominating fetish gear on women or any of the other characteristics th

Why More Equality? Our thirty years research shows that: 1) In rich countries, a smaller gap between rich and poor means a happier, healthier, and more successful population. Just look at the US, the UK, Portugal, and New Zealand in the top right of this graph, doing much worse than Japan, Sweden or Norway in the bottom left.

"It is a widely accepted principle of distributive justice that goods should be distributed to individuals according to their contribution, i.e., people should receive equal pay for equal work (equity principle)...Recently, neuroscientific studies have begun to address neural processes underlying social and economic phenomena like e.g., reactions to norm violations, status concerns, and reactions to unfair behavior. These studies have convergingly identified brain regions that are important for these aspects of social behavior. One consistent finding is that activations of the dopaminergic mesolimbic ("reward") system, especially the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) do not exclusively reflect material self-interest, but also social aspects

"The human brain is a big believer in equality -- and a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, has become the first to gather the images to prove it."

"This website is all about the intersection of biology and technology. It seeks to educate and inspire in equal measures. We live in very exciting times and they are getting more exciting all the time! Synthetic biology and genetic engineering will be important game changers over the course of this century and thus knowledge about them is valuable for people of any background. An important hurdle for these technologies is public acceptance, this acceptance can only come through education - and that is the real goal of this site."

"The old phrase "united we stand, divided we fall" applies equally well to the mechanisms of attention as it does to a patriotic cause. When devoted to a single task, the brain excels; when several goals splinter its focus, errors become unavoidable... non-stop decision making "

People should not be afraid of dark energy. Remember that the problem with the cosmological constant isn't that it's mysterious and ill-motivated - it's that it's too small! The naive theoretical prediction is larger than what's required by observation by a factor of 10^120. That's a puzzle, no doubt, but setting it equal to zero doesn't make the puzzle go away - then it's smaller than the theoretical prediction by a factor of infinity.

"computerbasedmath.org is the project to perform this reset. We're building a completely new math curriculum with computer-based computation at its heart, while campaigning at all levels to redefine math education away from historical hand-calculating techniques and toward real-life problem-solving situations that drive high-concept math understanding and experience."

I've been reading up on some of the considerations that must be part and parcel with the actual process of developing strong AI (defined as artificial intelligence that equals or exceeds human-level intelligence), and it seems clear that some pretty important questions must be asked and answered as part of the process.

Powerful vashikaran mantra for husband is like a blessing for a married life. Married life is incomplete without husband and wife. Both are equal part of this