Garvity isn’t a force. Space goes round corners

I’ve had an epiphany. I’ve been reading Why E=MC² and why should we care? by Brain Cox. It’s much better than Brief History of Time. Any way, it turns out Gravity isn’t a force at all. Space just goes round corners.

Way back in May I wrote about lap dancing clubs in Newquay. It was prompted by the local police chief in Newquay claiming that lap dancing clubs had contributed to 14 rapes and 34 sexual assaults in the previous two years. I made a slightly sardonic comment about it being unclear where the figures came from. Today I see that the same police chief is in the news again, this time admitting he made the figures up. The original claim came in a letter to the Cornwall Council in March in which he was objecting to an application for a new lap dancing club in the town. The thing that bothers me here is the fact that he appears to have abused his position of authority for personal reasons. I’m assuming he has a personal objection to lap dancing clubs.

I think some people, possible all people, naturally try and make statistics fit their philosophy. There is a piece in the Telegraph today under the headline, “Teenagers ‘can be corrupted’ by Hollywood sex scenes”. And the report is exactly what you would expect. It describes a new study, conducted by psychologists, who have concluded that teenagers exposed to more sex on screen in popular films are likely to have sexual relations with more people and without using condoms. The grammar in that last sentence is questionable, but it’s not mine. I am quoting from the piece written by Andrew Hough. The study itself seems reasonable. They studied 1228 children aged 12-14, and analysed their sexual behaviour and their film viewing habits over six years. The rewsults of the study apparently show that the more sexually promiscuous children are more likely to have watched films with a sexual content than the less promiscuous children.

But how do you go from that result to the conclusion that “teenagers can be corrupted” by by these films? All the study shows is that teens interested in films with a sexual element are also interested in real-life sexual encounters. And actually, that’s not only unsurprising, it doesn’t provide any evidence of a causal link between films and sexual behaviour. One could just as easily conclude for instance that teenagers who discovered sex at an early age were more likely to develop an interest in film sex as a result. It’s not unreasonable is it? One has to be 18 to watch an adult film, but the age of consent here is 16. Why couldn’t real-life sex come first?

Staying with teenagers, apparently an 18-year-old in Taiwan has collapsed and died in an internet café after a 40 hour gaming session. According to the Telegraph, the youth sat down in an internet cafe and played Diablo 3 for 40 straight hours without food or sleep. It’s been suggested that the 40-hour sitting position caused cardiovascular problems. Oddly, this is the second such incident. Another youth was found dead at the keyboard in Taiwan in February after a 23 hour session.