TresSugar

Smart and Rich? Scholar Says Poor People Have Lower IQ

LibertySugar — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:00:25 -0700

Dr. Bruce Charlton, an evolutionary English scholar, just submitted a paper that argues that the poor are intellectually mediocre. He claims that:

The UK Government has spent a great deal of time and effort in asserting that universities, especially Oxford and Cambridge, are unfairly excluding people from low social class backgrounds and privileging those from higher social classes. Yet in all this debate a simple and vital fact has been missed: higher social classes have a significantly higher average IQ than lower social classes.

He thinks that top schools are overwhelmingly populated with wealthy students as a result of the working class "meritocracy", not admission prejudice.

Charlton's tone, which seems to suggest that the poor are genetically inferior, is bothersome. Families working hard just to get by may not have the resources or time to foster their children's early education. Should higher education institutions and society in general take steps to correct the educational inequalities between the classes?

Do you see a class bias in IQ testing, or educational practices? Do the admission standards of elite universities exclude equally qualified students from working class families, or are there subconscious systematic factors at play here. Do universities have a responsibility to help those with a disadvantaged upbringing fulfill their potential?

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Oh Snap! Venezuela Rules the Universe

TresSugar — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:00:00 -0700

Miss Venezuela Stefania Fernandez was crowned Miss Universe 2009 last night at the Miss Universe pageant. The Donald Trump-led franchise, which has been televised since 1955, definitely gets a lot of attention for bringing together the world's "most beautiful" women (read: tall, thin, great bathing suit body). Despite the objectifying nature of beauty pageants, they don't seem to be going anywhere soon. How do you feel about these contests?

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Oh Snap! Miss Tiffany's Universe Contest Crowns Beauty

TresSugar — Mon, 18 May 2009 08:30:00 -0700

Over the weekend in Pattaya, Thailand, the 12th annual Miss Tiffany's Universe contest crowned another winner, 20-year-old Sorrawee Nattee.

All of the Miss Tiffany's contestants are transsexuals or transvestites and the contest aims to promote human rights for the transgender population in Thailand. In Thailand, the transgender population is considered a third gender. Below are tearful runners-up.

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The Homecoming Queen's Got a Gun!

GiggleSugar — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 02:00:00 -0800

Well, actually, she has a penis, but who cares! George Mason University showed some major cojones when it crowned a special homecoming queen at its Saturday basketball game: the super cute Ryan Allen who was dressed in his drag persona Reann Ballslee. Curious about Ryan/Reann? Then read more

Taunted mercilessly in high school, Ryan found a home at George Mason, which he says prides itself on its openness to diversity. He began performing as his drag alter ego at nightclubs, emceed Mason's drag show, and wore a silver bra and animal-print pants while lip-syncing Britney's "Womanizer" at the qualifying pageant.

Not everyone's happy. Named the number one national university to watch by US News & World Report, George Mason, according to one student, made a mistake. "All eyes were on us," he said. "And we do something like this? It's just stupid." Au contraire, mon frere! This just makes George Mason even cooler. Congrats Ryan/Reann! You're awesome.

Check This: Exporting US Universities

CitizenSugar — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:02:26 -0800

It was so gorgeous yesterday that as I was walking around, I thought my whole town looked just like one of those glossy college viewbooks - you know the idyllic pictures of students lounging on the grass, being studious. I inhaled those when I was picking a college. Apparently, that US shiny-student lifestyle is the new hot export.

According to the New York Times, US universities are racing each other to set up outposts abroad - and their campuses are becoming neighbors all over the Middle East. In the Persian Gulf country of Qatar, students can head to "Education City" and study medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, international affairs at Georgetown, computer science and business at Carnegie Mellon, fine arts at Virginia Commonwealth, engineering at Texas A&M, and coming soon, journalism at Northwestern.

To find out why colleges are rushing to take extended trips abroad, read more.
Overseas programs can:

Help American universities raise their profiles.
Build international relationships and attract top research talent who, in turn, may attract grants and produce patents.
Gain access to a new pool of tuition-paying students, just as the number of college-age Americans is about to decline.

But not everyone is wild about the idea. Dana Rohrabacher (R- CA) is reluctant. “I’m someone who believes that Americans should watch out for Americans first. It’s one thing for universities here to send professors overseas and do exchange programs, which do make sense, but it’s another thing to have us running educational programs overseas.”

What do you think? Do we raise our profile by sharing our educational system? Or should we hunker down and make sure we educate at home the top priority?

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Say What? Priest Says Don't Just Sit There and Masturbate!

TresSugar — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0800

"My concern is these students are in this developmental phase, and I don't think it's a good developmental practice to just tell somebody to just sit around and masturbate. I don't think that promotes good relationships."

- Father Joe Vetter, Duke University's Catholic Center director, reacting to news that a behavioral economist and student health workers at Duke University asked women on campus to discuss how they felt about sex toys. Of course, Father Vetter is also concerned about women sleeping around too much: "I'm concerned about promiscuity also," he said. Ummm, so what's a gal to do?

University of Washington Students Eat With Compost!

LibertySugar — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:00:37 -0700

When people live somewhere as naturally beautiful as the Pacific Northwest, I imagine they stop at no limits to help keep their environment clean and green. The University of Washington has banished all things plastic from its dining hall, opting for serving products that can be tossed directly into a compost pile.

The cups, containers, plates, and utensils are made of corn, reed work, and sugar cane. Sweet! The "silverware" wasn't so hot at first. Not only did it break down in the soil, it broke down in warm dishes like soup, too. But a year and a half after it began the creative-green initiative, the campus found a product that gets the job done.

Seattle should thank the University of Washington for the trial-and-error success because starting Jan. 1, all food establishments in the city will have to stop using foam, and by July 2010 all plastic must be substituted with recyclable or compostable containers. Sounds like hometown-company Starbucks has to rethink its lids!

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Product of the Day: Universal Bullsh*t Detector Watch

GiggleSugar — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 08:00:00 -0800

This thing is awesome. Press a button on the The Universal Bullshit Detector Watch and it gives out a big moo, then it creates a steaming dump, only to be topped with the loudest raspberry you ever heard. It doesn't so much detect bullshit as call it out--with flashing lights, no less. It's an accessory I can't live without.

Are People With Sensitive Noses More Empathetic?

TresSugar — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:00:00 -0700

Are you cursed and blessed with a good sense of smell? Cursed because you smell every ungodly stink no matter how far away, and blessed because lovely smells affect you deeply?

Psychology professor Denise Chen at Rice University thinks you may also be more empathetic than your olfaction-challenged neighbor.

Sense of smell and emotions come from the same area of the brain (the limbic system), and Chen set out to test their connection. In an experiment with 22 pairs of dorm-dwelling women, Chen asked them all to sleep in identical t-shirts. The next morning, she presented each person with three t-shirts: one worn by her roommate, and two others worn by other people in the dorm. The women who were able to identify their roommates' t-shirts by smell alone also scored high in emotional tests.

"The olfactory brain overlaps with the emotional brain," said Chen, "and is believed to have contributed to its evolution." Do you have a good sense of smell or wish you did?

Tufts to Dorm Dwellers: Get a Room!

TresSugar — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:30:00 -0700

Tufts University has just instituted a policy you'd think wouldn't need to be an official rule: don't have sex in your dorm room while your roommate's present, and don't "sexile" (sex + exile) your roommate, say at 3 a.m., because you want to get it on with your college sweetheart (or random hookup). So basically, if you're dwelling in a dorm, either have enough money to get a hotel room, find a comfy broom closet if passion strikes, or go without.

The Tufts policy arose because students were complaining that their horny roommates were intruding on their privacy and interfering with their studies by either having sex while they were present (ewww!) or asking them to leave for a few minutes. I am so glad I never stayed in a dorm - I just moved in with the boyfriend when I was in college! Problem solved.

How was dorm sex negotiated when you were in college?