1. Sulloway says four different studies, involving more than 5,000 subjects from five countries, also support this contentious view. "They have shown that first-borns are rated as being more conscientious, less agreeable, less extroverted – in the sense of being fun-loving and excitement-seeking – and less open to experience than later-borns," he says. "Several studies have shown that later-borns are judged to be the 'rebels' of the family and that they are actually more likely to rebel in real life."

Hmm. Definitely not true for my siblings and I, but I suppose it's true for my dad and his siblings.

two Swiss psychologists, Cecile Ernst and Jules Angst

Whoa. Where can I get a last name like that?

Harris explains that the strategies children learn to use at home to get along with siblings are not the same as those they employ outside home and in later life.

Not sure I agree here. Sure, kids behave differently in different social situations, but I doubt the in-home and away-from-home patterns are completely unconnected. Especially for only children who didn't have close cousins or friends of similar age early in life.

"What Sulloway is trying to explain here is the embarrassing fact – embarrassing not just to him but to all believers in the nurture assumption – that only children do not differ in any systematic way from children with siblings," Harris says. "These children have missed out on the experiences that play such an important role in Sulloway's theory: they haven't had to compete with their siblings for parental attention, and they haven't had to learn how to get along (or not get along) with a bossy older sister or a pesky younger brother. And yet their personalities are indistinguishable from those of children with siblings."

I beg to differ. The differences aren't huge, and they tend to disappear as school years progress, but they're there.

2. Oh good. Missouri and Kansas are doing their parts to further implement theocracy in our country.

3. Calm down, people. Jeez.

At her blog at http://itlovesyou.blogspot.com, Ariel Safdie has stated the statue is “intended to create discourse on the role of religion on public property.” Whether or not the statue was put up to ridicule the notion of religion influencing public policy I cannot prove. However, I do think it’s safe to say there are some out there who look at someone allowing his or her faith to influence his or her views on government to be as ridiculous as considering the Flying Spaghetti Monster as a respectable deity.

Um, that is in no way connected to the statement made by the statue's maker. "The role of religion on public property," in my mind, addresses government endorsement of one religion (or any religion) over another (or none). Not whether beliefs influence views on government.

While some may argue the statue was not locally done in effort to mock or belittle Christians, the idea of the spaghetti monster in its original context was proposed to do just that. In other words, the spaghetti monster concept was created to undermine the credibility of Intelligent Design as an alternative theory to Darwinian evolution.

When did "criticize" or "satirize" become synonymous with "undermine"? People criticize theories and ideas in academia all the time without vicious intent to "undermine" or overthrow said theories. Why is religion exempt from this?

In spite of their best efforts to appear as the objective, rational party, those opposed to Intelligent Design and the influence of religion upon the state have shown themselves to not be so “neutral” after all.

Again, confusion with language here. "Objective" and "rational" do not equate with or even imply "neutral".

Upholding something as tangible as the spaghetti monster affirms a connection to an ideology through a symbolic bond. This ideology holds that “separation of church and state” means one must divorce any conviction gained from religious faith from public policy[.]

Again. Complete misunderstanding. That's not what separation of church and state means at all. If you don't know the difference, go do some reading. I don't have the time or energy to elaborate here.

By a fallacious interpretation of the First Amendment, many in our society believe government cannot legislate based on ideas derived from ideologies deemed religious.

Yes, that's a fallacious interpretation. But church-state separationists don't ascribe to that interpretation. Sigh.

Okay. Fine. I'll elaborate briefly. I don't have a problem with someone legislating issues that overlap with religious issues if the resulting law doesn't limit or punish those who don't follow said religion themselves. Since the moral codes of many religions and sects resemble one another, it'd be damn near impossible to make laws without referencing morals that showed up in one religion or another. It's when those morals go beyond common sense and start oppressing people with different beliefs (say, prohibiting same sex marriage, or enforcing abstinence-only sex ed) that the church-state separationists get upset.

4. I just like the icon on the map here.

5. I believe that no linguist has ever said that comprehensibility implies standardness[.]

A nice little piece on language ideology there.

1. Vote for Penn!

2. This makes me even sadder that optional gender-neutral housing at Brown never worked out. Hopefully it will someday.

And some of these parents, under a doctor’s supervision, have even begun to administer hormone blockers to prevent the arrival of secondary sex characteristics until a “gender variant” child is old enough to make permanent choices.

This is where I start to hesitate. What are the long-term consequences of hormone blockers? This reminds me a little of the Ashley Treatment, which is not a good association in my mind. Well-intentioned, but possibly not the best thing to do?

students will often use gender-neutral pronouns like “ze” and “hir”

Good luck with that. It's been tried before, and it's never stuck.

But today many students who identify as trans are seeking not simply to change their sex but to create an identity outside or between established genders — they may refuse to use any gender pronouns whatsoever or take a gender-neutral name but never modify their bodies chemically or surgically. These students are also considered part of the trans community, though they are known as either gender nonconforming or genderqueer rather than transmen or transmale.

I'm all for expanding the gender binary. Other cultures have done it. But I suppose my attitude is just a by-product of my indoctrination at that liberal brainwashing factory of a college I attended. One too many anthropology courses, I suppose.

In the first week of September, he found out that his roommates had complained to the college’s freshman housing director about being asked to share their rooms with a man. They wanted Rey to find somewhere else to live. According to Dorothy Denburg, the dean who spoke to Rey about the situation, these young women were disturbed when Rey told them on the first day “that he was a transboy and wanted to be referred to by male pronouns.”

One of the reasons we need optional gender-neutral housing in dorms.

Part of the couple’s sangfroid is generational — she and Rey see themselves as genderqueer rather than gay. For them, sexual orientation is fluid. Like some of their peers, Melissa and Rey want to be — and sometimes imagine they already are — part of the first generation to transcend gender.

As long as they realize that plenty of people are still perfectly happy identifying with traditional gender roles. And don't look down on those who do.

While many gender-nonconforming students don’t have “top surgery” in their freshman years, they may still struggle with their colleges’ medical services, not because they want specialized treatments but because they want health care that is sensitive to their new identities. As one gender-noncomforming student complained to me, he hated that health services insisted on treating him “like a girl.”

They're in the medical field. They're not gonna lie about your anatomy. But maybe some sort of staff orientation about gender identity wouldn't hurt.

“gender identity” was recently dropped from the 2007 Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA.

Wait, what? It was in there, but then they took it back out? The hell.

Earlier at lunch, Melissa joked about whether they were even in a relationship, “I’m not sure: Rey doesn’t do labels.”

Heh. I liked the guy until that point, but people who "don't do labels" tend to piss me off.

“Some transmen want to be seen as men — they want to be accepted as born men,” he said. “I want to be accepted as a transman — my brain is not gendered.["]

Well, no, it's not. The word 'gender' refers to societal constructs that correspond -- to varying degrees -- to physical/biological states. Not the biological state itself.

3. An interesting piece about atheism and raising children (via Friendly Atheist).

I really like the author's approach. The more I think about it, when/if I have kids, I'd want to expose them to as many different religions/beliefs as possible. Go visit different churches, temples, etc., and discuss them all. Excluding the more extreme, fundamentalist groups. Children don't need to be exposed to fundamentalism. Churches should be given movie ratings. I'm not sure if Westboro would be R or NC-17. Any votes?

4. Kansas strikes again.

5. "There is no way that modern humans, I believe, could have evolved from a species like Neanderthal," Sawyer said. "They're certainly a cousin - they're human - but they're one of those strange little offshoots."

Does anyone believe humans evolved from Neanderthals? I wasn't aware that anyone who knew anything about paleoanthropology still thought that.

D'oh

Spoke too soon. [Dead link.]

Go Kansas

Unexpected, but good news.