LinkFest 2016-05-20

The Real Reason College Tuition Costs So Much

Colleges and universities provide an incredible array of services today. They aren't free.

Why Doesn't Personality Psychology Have A Replication Crisis?

In part, because it is boring. In practice, that is a synonym for successful.

John McAfee and what really happened in Belize

John McAfee is a weird duck. However, I believe pretty much everything he says about Belize, since I knew someone who moved there to retire, and then moved back to the US in exasperation.

Mixed gender teams come up short in Marines' infantry experiment

The results here don't really surprise me. There is this big board of local records at my gym, all the fastest times and heaviest weights for various workouts. Every single one of them has a male list and a female list, because in almost every workout men outcompete women. Almost. Women do very well in bodyweight exercises, and are almost at parity in pure cardio, which is similar to what the Marines found.

Texas Fracking and the Death of Big Oil

I found the comments on this post, interesting. And by interesting I mean crazy. However, the gist of the article and the more credible comments matches up with what little I know of the oil industry in the US. I have been to a joint medical device/oil industry conference in Houston twice, and I've spoken with oil folks there. Several friends or friends of friends work in oil, in both Texas and California. To whit: ExxonMobil has something on the ball. I was really impressed by their technical folks, and Exxon seems to be ready for whatever may come businesswise. The technological leap of new fracking methods is incredible. Recently, I read that modern technology is either stagnant, or doubling every 18 months. Fracking seems to be doing the latter.

New Wrinkle in UVA / Rolling Stone Lawsuit

Now it seems there is proof that Haven Monahan didn't exist. Clusterfake indeed.

Courage vs. Boldness: How to live with Spartan bravery

I really like the work Brett McKay does at the Art of Manliness. This is a good piece that highlights exactly why Sparta has been held up as an exemplar for 2500 years, without being overly sentimental.

Deirdre McCloskey on the bathroom battle

This is an interesting piece. I've suspected that World War T is less about the tiny tiny number of trans people, and more about sticking it to the losers of the Culture War after winning the gay marriage battle. I also suspect that actual incidents of harassment have gone up because of the extra attention focused on this right now. Sometimes, shutting the hell up is a far better policy, but that assumes what you want is for people to pee in peace, rather than lord your superiority over your political opponents.

On a related note: I've used women's bathrooms for several years, because not everywhere has changing tables in men's restrooms. Logically, one might think of this as a feminist issue, but it isn't. I have dark theories about this. And, I will also note not one damn person has once said anything to me. Probably because I have an infant in tow when I do this.

New poll finds 9 in 10 Native Americans aren't offended by Redskins name

Again, I'm not surprised. I tend to interpret most culture war fights like this as one group of whites trying to assert superiority over other whites using minorities as a proxy. Whatever the actual people involved want just complicates the narrative. An exception seems to be Black Lives Matter, which is run by black people and is actually about black people.