If you save a few lives and ruin thousands of others, is it worth it?

Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism?: How Women Have Betrayed Women, has a good article in USA Today on false domestic violence stats and why they are so harmful:

But when the BBC journalists presented the deputy chief constable, Carmel Napier, from the town of Gwent with evidence that the World Cup abuse campaign was based on twisted statistics, she replied: "If it has saved lives, then it is worth it."

It is not worth it. Misinformation leads to misdirected policies that fail to target the true causes of violence. Worse, those who promulgate false statistics about domestic violence, however well-meaning, promote prejudice. Most of the exaggerated claims implicate the average male in a social atrocity. Why do that? Anti-male misandry, like anti-female misogyny, is unjust and dangerous. Recall what happened at Duke University a few years ago when many seemingly fair-minded students and faculty stood by and said nothing while three innocent young men on the Duke Lacrosse team were subjected to the horrors of a modern-day witch hunt.

The Duke accusers used the same tired stereotyped collective guilt to make false claims. I am so sick of people saying "if it saves one life, it's worth it." That is no justification for lying about domestic violence statistics, and then using this lie to treat men without due process and take away their rights as citizens of the US. How can you save lives by lying about the problem? Careers, maybe, but not lives.

Economics 101

I am attempting to read Thomas Sowell's excellent new updated book Basic Economics 4th Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. I say attempting because the book is 689 pages long and filled with detailed information including a new chapter on the history of economics. I took economics in college but it's been awhile and Sowell's book really brings the layperson up to date on what economics is and how principals of economics apply around the world.

Sowell uses British economist Lionel Robbins classic definition of economics:

Economics is the study of the use of scarce resources which have alternative uses.

It sounds simple enough but the next 600 or so pages of Sowell's book are required just to understand this simple enough definition. Sowell notes:

...economics studies the consequences of decisions that are made about the use of land, labor, capital and other resources that go into producing the volume of output which determines a country's standard of living. Those decisions and their consequences can be more important than the resources themselves, for there are poor countries with rich natural resources and countries like Japan and Switzerland with relatively few natural resources but high standards of living.

Why is this? How do politics play a part? These are the questions I have and as I travel through the book one page at a time, I am learning the answers. Perhaps you have other economic questions such as the role of prices and why they are important, or you want to know more about the economics of international trade, or you just want to know about the different theories of economic thought in a fun and easy to read format. It's all in this book and more than I care (or you would want to read) to write about in a blog post.

Cross-posted at the PJ Tatler.

"Cordell shared his advice for what he estimates are the 500,000 men this year who will navigate the challenges of a divorce."

There is an interesting article on advice for men getting divorced in the Chicago Tribune (Hat Tip: Leslie):

As co-founder of a law firm that specializes in representing men in family law cases, Joseph Cordell has witnessed the devastating effects of male blunders. We chatted recently with Cordell, author of "The 10 Stupidest Mistakes Men Make When Facing Divorce: And How to Avoid Them" (Three Rivers Press, $15). He and his wife, Yvonne, are co-founders of the law firm Cordell & Cordell and have a website, DadsDivorce.com. A happily married father of two daughters, Cordell shared his advice for what he estimates are the 500,000 men this year who will navigate the challenges of a divorce.

Some highlights of mistakes men make from the book:

1. Moving out before divorce proceedings begin. "In custody contests, the continued daily interaction with your children and intimate awareness of the details of their day is key."

2. Choosing the wrong lawyer. "It's reasonable to ask lawyers how many divorces they have tried."

3. Waiting for your wife to file. "Judges, even after all their legal training and experience, are still prone to give a lot of weight to the story they hear first."

Amy Alkon: "Wearing pink doesn't stop breast cancer, wearing red doesn't eliminate heart disease."

Does Wikipedia eat every female contributor's edits every time she writes them?

The Spearhead:

There’s a reason women don’t generally contribute to Wikipedia, and it has little to do with sexism, “culture,” or lack of rules. The reason is, simply, that they don’t care. That’s right, it may be amazing to some people, but the overwhelming majority of women simply couldn’t care less about an online encyclopedia.

The New York Times article quoted by The Spearhead indicates that Wikipedia is sexist against women because only about 15% of the contributors are women. Does Wikipedia eat every female contributor's edits every time she writes them? Because so far, they haven't done that to me, nor have they taken down my Wikipedia entry since I am female. Heck, they even called me on the phone once to ask if they could use a picture for the entry. If they were that sexist, wouldn't they have caught onto the fact that the name Helen is most likely female and deleted my entry? The point here is that, for whatever reason, women may not spend much time contributing to Wikipedia. So what?

"So let’s do a victory-lap for gender equality and stop the feminist set-asides and quota-mongering."

Carey Roberts at PJM has an article on how to save real money in Washington DC (Hat tip to Ed Driscoll):

The Republican Study Committee recently announced a plan to prune $2.5 trillion from the long-standing federal spending spree. Yes, $2.5 trillion is a lot of pocket change, but the RSC plan doesn’t go far enough in ridding the federal government of the feminist strongholds salted throughout the bureaucracy.

Let’s be clear: These feminist programs are not about promoting equal opportunity. Au contraire, mon frere. These “female-empowerment” initiatives are all about sex-based quotas, preferences, and earmarks that in practice serve to disadvantage men in schools, in the workplace, and in the legal system.