Earlier the Daily Mail enraged readers by reporting the study’s findings. The Guardian’s Charlie Brooker called it a deliberate act of trolling. In the US, Live Science ran the story provoking scorn and ridicule in conservative forums like Free Republic.

It started with a paper by Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busseri in Psychological Science: ‘Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact’ (pdf). The researchers conclude:

Our synthesis demonstrates that cognitive ability plays a substantial role not only in predicting prejudice, but also in predicting its potential precursors: right-wing ideologies and authoritarian value systems, which can perpetuate social inequality by emphasizing the maintenance of the status quo, and a lack of contact and experience with out-groups.

Here’s a few of the online responses to the paper and the debate that followed.

Low IQ & conservative beliefs linked to prejudice: "There’s no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy." Stephanie Pappas, Live Science.

Conservatism is linked to low intelligence; but the real idiots are the progressives letting it win: "There is plenty of research showing that low general intelligence in childhood predicts greater prejudice towards people of different ethnicity or sexuality in adulthood. Open-mindedness, flexibility, trust in other people: all these require certain cognitive abilities. Understanding and accepting others – particularly ‘different’ others – requires an enhanced capacity for abstract thinking." George Monbiot.

George Monbiot’s worst-ever Guardian column – and that’s saying something! "The first thing to be said about this supposedly definitive piece of research – Moonbat calls it ‘embarrassingly robust’– is that the authors, Gordon Hodson and Michael A Busseri, rely to a great extent on a measure of intelligence that has been discredited." Toby Young, The Telegraph.

Monbiot is aping old Right-wing elitists: "It was traditionally the authoritarian wing of the Right which wrote off its opponents effectively as retards, claiming that their ‘base motives’ would infect and destroy proper politics." Brendan O’Neill, The Telegraph.

Leftists don’t know what conservatism is: "What is going on of course is that Leftist psychologists swallow hook line and sinker of Leftist propaganda about conservatives. They believe that conservatives really are as Leftist propaganda describes them. It would appear that they never bother to talk to any actual conservatives to find out what they really think." John J Ray, A Western Heart.

This sort of research is essential and insightful: "We need to understand the patterns of cognitive variation, whether it be intelligence or personality, which may result in differences of opinion. At the end of the day no opinions may change, but one may be able to construct a crisper argument when taking into account the genuine roots of one’s political opponents viewpoints, rather than your own ill-informed caricature." Razib Khan, Gene Expression.

Truly, statistics can ‘prove’ anything: "What makes the study ludicrous, even ignoring the biases, manipulations, and qualifications just outlined, by the authors’ own admission the direct effect size for ‘g’ on ‘racism’ is only -0.01 for men and 0.02 for women. Utterly trivial; close enough to no effect to be no effect, their results statistically “significant” only because of the massive sample size." William M Briggs.

Why libertarians need to talk with the left and how to do it: "Between Left and Right, the reality remains that the Left is still closer to our ideals. They are more likely to agree with our social liberalism and foreign policy even though they are economic interventionists." James Peron, Moorfield Storey Blog.

Men who argue with goats: They love a good argument at Menzies House.

… or with Cory Bernardi: "Throughout history it has been demonstrated that any government that becomes too big eventually is forced to accrue a level of debt that cannot be sustained." Cory Bernardi.

The biggest government in the world? "The Congressional Budget Office report … says that annual deficits will remain in the $1 trillion range for the next several years if Bush-era tax cuts slated to expire in December are extended, as commonly assumed." NBC Politics.

So what about the Nordics? "If heavy taxation has harmful economic effects, why have Denmark and Sweden performed similarly to the United States during a period of several decades in which their taxes were much higher than America’s?" Lane Kenworthy.

In praise of private equity: "The difficult truth that virtually no politician is prepared to acknowledge is that the road to job creation runs through job destruction." Reihan Salam.

The introvert’s lament: Social butterflies are annoying. Overdressed Anarchist.

Op shopping: Justin Campbell finds a copy of Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose in an op shop. "I quickly grabbed hold of the book and guarded it in case someone else wanted to buy it", he writes. "The bewildered shopkeeper seemed surprised at my excitement."

The fate of Mrs Petrov’s lost shoe: Apparently Sir Les Paterson has it.

Australia Day from afar: "One of the most surprising things for me to experience out of Australia was people saying–even in the American South!–Australia’s really racist, isn’t it?" Queen Emily, Hoyden About Town.

Drunks draped in flags: "the path that took us here is a complex one. Music festivals, drinking binges, the crystallisation of fears and resentments, the navel gazing over Identity, all that is part of the road, as well as politicians." Kim, Larvatus Prodeo.

The view from Menzies House: Tim Andrews celebrates Australia Day with a whinge about lefties and "self-appointed intellectual elites".

Be as Australian as you want to be: "Let us be frank: anti-racist prejudice is the worst kind of prejudice at all. It denies freedom of expression; it denies freedom of conscience; and most heinous of all, it denies courage." Ben Pobjie.

John Passant reports on the tent embassy protest: "Soon about 200 of the demonstrators moved from the Tent Embassy commemoration to the café to tell Abbott what they thought of him …" En Passant.

Steve Kates on the protests: "I must tell you my disgust is unbounded. We tend not to jail such people, but that is in the way of more fool us than anything." Catallaxy.

Missing the story: The press gallery "shine the light almost exclusively on the confected battle between tweedle dee and tweedle dum – the figureheads at the top of decaying political parties that everyone outside the inbred Canberra vortex can see are just shells of organisations pretending to believe in something beyond power itself." Mr Denmore, The Failed Estate.

Michael loves Heather: "She’s a saint. A princess. A fairy queen. A beautiful, kind, intelligent. imaginative, brave young woman with a wicked sense of humour and a shipload of empathy." Michael Stuchbery gets married.

One year on: "How do you grieve for someone who hurt you profoundly, repeatedly, and tore your family apart? Who was also deeply intelligent, cursed with mental illness, incredibly funny, and when he could be, loving?" Imogen, raw/roar.

What’s So Special about America’s 1%? "If we’re all embedded in a fundamentally unjust, exploitative global economic structure, it’s hard to see why the American 1% should be especially salient." Will Wilkinson, The Moral Sciences Club.

Social justice … Tea Party style: "A common trope for conservative policy intellectuals is that they want to ‘means test’ the welfare state – reduce its availability for those with high wealth and income and focus it on those with the least wealth and income. But the Tea Party base wants the opposite – they are opposed to a welfare state for the poor, young people, undocumented workers and other groups they think are undeserving." Mike Konczal, Rortybomb.

Dogs against Romney: Why is everyone talking about Mitt Romney’s dog?

Blog readers survey: Peter Chen is conducting a survey of blog readers. You can find the survey here: Australian Blog Readers Study (via Andrew Norton).

Left-wing Paulbots are go! Left-wingers, greens and progressives should be supporting Ron Paul‘s bid for the Republican nomination, writes Leichhardt Greens Councillor, Daniel Kogoy.

Ron Paul on the "whole global warming terrorism" thing: In 2009 Paul said that the Copenhagen treaty on climate change "can’t help the economy. It has to hurt the economy and it can’t possibly help the environment because they’re totally off track on that. It might turn out to be one of the biggest hoaxes of all history, this whole global warming terrorism that they’ve been using, but we’ll have to just wait and see, but it cannot be helpful. It’s going to hurt everybody.” He made similar comments in an interview with Fox Business (at 7:00).

Industry subsidies and political tribalism: At current levels, subsidies to the car industry are third-order, writes John Quiggin. So why all the fuss? "It’s taken for granted on the cultural right that some technologies and industries (nuclear power, oil, finance) are good and others (wind energy, electric cars, Hollywood) are evil – essentially a mirror image of what they think we on the left think. For people who are supposed to believe in the free market, this is a big problem."

There’s a margin in error: "Like advertising, journalism now is mostly about constructing a version of the truth that suits a chosen market. It’s about making an impact and attracting eyeballs and building a brand. And the greatest shame of it all is that a gullible public buys it." Mr Denmore, The Failed Estate.

Voting is about values not interests: "It isn’t rational to vote for your economic interests. It isn’t rational in the economist’s sense to vote at all. Why not, because your individual vote doesn’t count." The Philosopher’s Beard.

The Great Gatsby Curve: Alan Krueger calls it the ‘Great Gatsby curve’ — the finding that countries that have more inequality across households also have more persistence in income from one generation to the next. As Matthew Yglesias points out, that’s bad news for Republican claims that America doesn’t need to redistribute income because it’s the land of equal opportunity and upward mobility.

Hands up if you want downward mobility: "Someone in society is going to end up doing crappy jobs," writes Megan McArdle, "because trash needs to be hauled and Alzheimer’s patients need to have their diapers changed. The primary job of a middle class parent is to ensure that their children are not those people."

Technological change and economic growth : Steve Kates picks a fight with a ‘socialist’ blogger who claims that free markets drive technological change and generate wealth. “Gimme a break" he says, "It is free markets that drive tech change and generate wealth. But it is not ‘tech change’ as such, but entrepreneurs, those people, like Mitt Romney, who do the driving and if they succeed, end up very wealthy. To present it as ‘tech change’ means that rubbish like the NBN or batts in the belfry might get counted."

Mobile phones and the price of fish: Mobile phones are transforming the way people in countries like India do business. In a 2007 paper economist Robert Jensen explained how access to mobile telecommunications allowed fishermen in Kerala to get the best prices for their catch.

"My mother died in 1976. Is she all right?" Kerryn Goldsworthy visits the supermarket.

The missing liberals: Why is there no liberal party? Because there are so few people who support both economic and social liberal causes, says Andrew Norton. Andrew cites data from the 2010 Australian Election Survey.

Dr Watson vs Dr Ludd: With access to huge databases, expert systems will soon be able to diagnose illness better than doctors, says Alex Tabarrok. Not everyone is convinced.

Penalty rate claims hard to swallow: "To believe that Mr Calombaris would open his restaurants on Sundays only to have them run at a loss is to believe that he’s running some sort of altruistic quasi-charity, an impression he attempts to give by suggesting that he opens on Sundays for reasons of ‘tourism’." Matt Cowgill.

Game of thrones: Greg Jericho is tired of reading about leadership challenges.

Adult content? "I can never understand how it’s ok to see images of a woman with breasts larger than her head, but a tasteful picture of something so natural as breastfeeding is ‘offensive’ to those same people." The Happy Sorceress on the Dave Dorman controversy (via Blue Milk).

Why Boardwalk Empire is more like cinema than tv: "In recent years, television shows have increasingly adopted cinematic tropes. Some of these can be found in current television series, nevertheless Boardwalk Empire is the pinnacle of this trend." I Heart the Talkies.

Equality means never having to drink warm beer: LG’s new ‘blast chiller’ compartment can cool a can of beer in five minutes. But to get this feature you have to buy a fridge that costs more that $2,500. Even super-rich people don’t buy refrigerators by the dozen so according to Matthew Yglesias that means "the incentive to invest money in developing even better appliances is relatively muted." He suggests that rising middle class incomes would encourage appliance makers to introduce more of these kinds of features.

Fairness on a budget: Britain’s Attlee government of 1945-51 built the modern welfare state and delivered greater income equality even though it inherited a debt to GDP ratio three times today’s level, writes Chris Dillow. So why is it so hard to implement egalitarian policies today?

How to win a Republican primary: "To survive a Republican debate you are required to hold the incoherent view that the budget should be balanced immediately, taxes cut dramatically, and the major categories of spending (the military, Social Security, Medicare) left largely intact. There is no way to make these numbers add up, and the candidates do not try, relying instead on focus-group tested denunciations of Obama and abstract hostility to the ways of Washington." Jacob Weisberg, Slate.

Are traditional media institutions worth saving? In an age of internet-enabled networks, should established media institutions be allowed to wither away? Dean Starkman says no. Gary Sauer-Thompson isn’t convinced: "Most journalism takes the form of infotainment or partisan political commentary; operates within narrow intellectual boundaries; favours ‘he said she said’ analysis; avoids public policy issues; and doesn’t even bother with facts anymore. Honestly, not much public-interest reporting is produced in Australia’s existing media institutions."

Mr Denmore’s 12-step program for junk media junkies in 2012: Stop watching Q&A, turn off the Insiders, ignore the polls and spend more time at the pub. But what about Andrew Bolt?

Justice without borders: Does justice require rich countries to redistribute resources to poor ones? At Oz Conservative Mark Richardson discusses Kok-Chor Tan’s book, Toleration, Diversity and Global Justice.

What if poor people don’t like money? According to Greg Mankiw: "one reason that people differ in their incomes is that some people care more about having a high income than others." In a post about Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow, Bryan Caplan argues that "Leftist outrage over income inequality is therefore deeply misguided." Why? because when you think of low-income people as losers: "you’re falsely assuming that we’re all racing for the same finish line: material success."

Upwards redistribution: "People are inclined to give much more legitimacy to market outcomes than policy outcomes engineered by governments. That is why there is a whole industry devoted to convincing people that the upward redistribution of income over the last three decades, which has given the bulk of economic gains to the One Percent, is really just the result of the natural workings of the market." Dean Baker, CEPR.

Peter Martin’s pursuit of power: Peter Martin discovers an Australian-style powerpoint in Argentina. Argentina is one of a handful of countries (including China) that use the same plug design as Australia.

Missing link is taking a vacation. See you next year!

The destruction of the tea: What did the original tea party patriots stand for? Alfred F. Young looks at the history behind the Boston Tea Party.

Are Slaves Growing Your Fair Trade Cotton? Matthew Yglesias links to a story about child labour on ‘fair trade’ farms in Burkina Faso by Cam Simpson at Bloomberg. According to Yglesias, it’s not just about poor monitoring of a fair trade program, there’s also a link between organic certification and forced labour: "organic agriculture is less capital-intensive and thus more labor-intensive than conventional agriculture, so paying a premium for organic cotton creates an extra incentive to add forced labor into the production mix."

How do rich countries lift up the poor? The answer is something no politician wants to hear — transfer payments. According to Lane Kenworthy, countries that kept transfers rising in line with GDP did better than those that indexed payments to prices. In an article for Pathways magazine he argues that "we shouldn’t pretend that paid work is a realistic route to guaranteeing rising incomes for everyone."

If women do the spending, does it matter that they don’t do the earning? It’s no secret that women earn less than men. But according the the Philosopher’s Beard, women are in charge of most household discretionary spending. "It would seem that a full gender justice analysis of the economy should include not only how gender relates to the composition of household income, but also how household consumption is gendered."

Santa’s other helper: Nice children get presents but what happens to naughty children? According to Michael the Researcher, Santa has a demonic helper who beats naughty children with a swtich and carries them off in sack. In some places he is known as Krampus, in others. Knecht Ruprecht. "My Mother went to a Bavarian all-girl school in Augsburg in the mid-to-late 1940s", writes Michael, "and she remembers when Knecht Ruprecht came into the classroom and took a naughty girl away, kicking and screaming the entire time."

When Bad Sex Work Drives out the Good: Many sex workers are victims of human trafficking, writes Marina Adshade. And a new study provides "very good evidence that legalization of prostitution increases human trafficking". Blue Milk also addresses the issue of sex work, provoking an extended conversation in the comments thread.

Obama’s Wonderfully Wrongheaded Speech: The Overdressed Anarchist hasn’t been won over by Obama’s Osawatomie speech. "If the President were serious about sending a message about equality, his Administration would be knocking on Wall Street’s door, SWAT teams in the rear", he writes.

Why the occupiers love Lincoln : When Obama attacked the Wall Street plutocracy he took cover behind Theodore Roosevelt. When Roosevelt attacked the plutocracy he took cover behind Abraham Lincoln. "Want to know what the Occupy Movement is all about? " asks Bejamin Gorman, "Abraham Lincoln knew 150 years ago." Read Lincoln’s First Annual Message from 1861 and you’ll understand why.

Robert Audi and the Separation of Church and State: According to liberal democrats, states must govern on the basis of principles all citizens accept. Religious principles are notoriously controversial so liberal democrats often argue that governments should avoid relying on religious reasons when making policy. Hence the commitment to the separation of church and state and the requirement that citizens bracket off their religious commitments when they take part in public life. But is idea that politics and religion should be kept separate noncontroversial? At New Books in Philosophy Robert Talisse interviews Robert Audi about his new book: Democratic Authority and the Separation of Church and State.

News isn’t the problem, it’s the advertising markets that are broken: By denying newspapers access to the old sources of advertising revenue the internet has thrown the news business into turmoil. So why is everyone so focused on how news is produced and distributed? According to Joshua Gans,"what we are seeing may not necessarily have anything to do with how news is produced per se but instead the mechanics of the supposedly unseemly advertising side of the equation."

Bank Tellers and ATMs: President Obama keeps saying that ATM are putting bank tellers out of work. Matthew Yglesias isn’t convinced.

Why journalists need Twitter : Often maligned as quick chat for empty headed gossips, Twitter can play a valuable role in news gathering and reporting writes Alan Knight.

The surplus fetish: The "notion that we will be eternally damned in the fires of fiscal hell unless government revenues exceed spending by even a dollar" is a ridiculous idea, says Mr Denmore. But by trying to look like a fiscal tough guy, Wayne Swan has boxed himself into a corner.

Bob Carr is wrong about welfare: Australia’s means-tested welfare system keeps spending down and allows governments to retire debt, says Bob Carr. But Carr is confused says Matt Cowgill. "The ability to pay down debt is obviously a function of both spending and taxes".

A linguistic tax: English is fast becoming Europe’s dominant language says Philippe Van Parijs. In his new book Linguistic Justice for Europe and for the World, he argues that native English speakers share the benefits of a common language without having to meet the costs. A tax on Anglophone countries would reduce this unfairness. Ingrid Robeyns has started an online reading group at Spongia.

Occupy and the mirage of democratic consensus: "The intransigence of the Occupy movement suggests an unwillingness among its numbers to take seriously the fact of pluralism, and the corollary impossibility of consensus, which makes majoritarian democratic procedures necessary in the first place." Will Wilkinson.

Better schools won’t save the American Dream: Early childhood not schooling holds the key reducing the academic achievement gap, writes Sean Reardon in the Boston Review. The article is part of series: Occupy the Future, that includes contributions from Kenneth Arrow, Rob Reich and others.

The meaning of merit : A meritocracy rewards the hardworking and the virtuous writes Luigi Zingales. But at the Monkey Cage Andrew Gelman disagrees: "In a meritocracy, you can be as hardworking as John Kruk or as virtuous as Kobe Bryant and you’ll still get ahead—-if you have the talent and achievement. Throwing in ‘hardworking’ and ‘virtuous’ seems to me to an attempt (unconscious, I expect) to retroactively assign moral standing to the winners in an economic race."

Poking fun at mummy blogs: Parodies of mummy blogs make Blue Milk laugh, but …

White Ribbon Day: "In an afternoon in Montreal on December 6th 1989, a man massacred 14 of his female classmates. From this horrific action, a nation was brought to the forefront of an issue that had been severely underreported for too long."Lip Magazine.

"White Ribbon Day promotes change by highlighting the positive role that men can play. It encourages all men across the world to take an active stance against violence against women. This Friday, 25 November, is White Ribbon Day, a day when men say it is not okay to use violence against women, when men speak out to change the attitudes and behaviours which allow violence against women to occur and when taking action to address violence against women is celebrated, supported and encouraged." Andrew Leigh.

Louis Althusser and socialist strategy: "Althusser’s career ended in a squalid tragedy when, under the influence of a mental illness that had grown more intense over the years, he strangled his wife, Hélène." Lenin’s Tomb.

Issue of Violence Divides Occupy Protesters: "Is there a place for violence in the Occupy movement?" asks Sayre Quevedo at Turnstyle.

Violence and disruptive power: "We understand the sheepishness about speaking of violence in social movements" writes Lenin in a post on Occupy and disruptive power. "It is not a comforting or politically sympathetic thought that popular violence has been productive; that without it, unjust systems would not have been overturned."

Martin Luther King and non-violent protest: "When is violence justified as a response to manifest and apparently immovable injustice? My answer, with Martin Luther King is: Never, or almost never." John Quiggin.

Pepper spray parodies: When the Lieutenant John Pike used pepper spray against protesters at University of California, Davis, photos of the incident quickly became raw material for satirists. Shane Greenstein at Digitopoly. and tigtog at Hoyden about town have more.

Structural Violence and the US health care system: "The subjective violence of a personal attack, of war, terrorism, or torture is easy to see and to condemn. Structural violence is less visible, more subtle and therefore harder to critique and change. The structural violence of the health-care system in the United States violates distributive justice." Valerie Elverton Dixon, God’s Politics.

Put it up to eleven: "The entire media is shouting ALL the time because they’re worried that if they pull back on their Tube Screamers their highly compressed copy won’t be heard over all the other sources of distraction", says Mr Denmore.

We reject your demand for demands: The Occupy movement’s lack of demands is a strength, writes Tad Tietze. And at the Brookings Institution, Elisabeth Jacobs agrees: "Occupy Wall Street’s lack of explicit demands is smart movement politics for the time being, advantageous for the movement itself and for savvy politicians alike. For a month-old movement with solid popular support, OWS’s demand-free stance makes good sense."

Presidential hopeful Rick Perry has policies… but he can’t remember what they are.

The right-wing hive-mind? At Larvatus Prodeo, commenter Rob wonders about the flood of comments on issues like climate change and refugees. They "have a consistent right wing bias ie the commentators are consistently right wing through and through but yet seemingly they will only let their views be known on about 3 or 4 topics." Something "very planned is obviously going on", says Rob.

A vast right-wing conspiracy? "In the United States of America there is evidence that the right have to hire people to pretend to be right-wing commenters in order to keep up with the genuine enthusiasm and activism of the left in on-line media." Blue Milk (see also: Craigslist ad for right-wing commenters draws suspicion and a few giggles, National Post).

Immigration Restrictions as Affirmative Action: "Conservatives usually think that ‘oppressed minorities’ should spend a lot less time complaining about unfair treatment and a lot more time improving their skills and work ethic. Fair point, but the same holds for native-born Americans who complain that immigrants are taking their jobs." Bryan Caplan at Econlog.

McRib arbitrage: American econo-bloggers are fascinated by the comings and goings of McDonald’s McRib sandwich. It starts with this post by Willy Staley at the Awl. Matthew Yglesias and Alex Tabarrok join in.

What did they miss? "Ironically, the topic for today’s lecture is the distribution of income, including the growing gap between the top 1 percent and the bottom 99 percent", writes Greg Mankiw.

Are you in Australia’s top 1 percent? "According to the ATO’s tax statistics, if you earned $248 192 or more in 2008-09, you were part of the top 1%", writes Matt Cowgill.

Conservatives and freedom: "The Tea Party alliance between libertarians and conservatives gives the misleading impression that conservatives care about individual freedom", writes the Philosopher’s Beard.

Why Will Wilkinson isn’t a liberal: "I’ve come to accept … that diffuse cultural forces, such as racism or sexism or nationalism or intergenerational poverty, can deprive an individual of her rightful liberty without any single person doing anything to violate her basic rights. This takes me a long way toward standard liberalism. But I find that my gut nevertheless leans right on issues of personal responsibility." Will Wilkinson at the Moral Sciences Club.

Keeping the state out of your bedroom: Libertarians say they want to keep the state out of your bedroom. John Quiggin doesn’t believe them.

Lying to ourselves: According to psychologists, "self-deception evolved so that we can effortlessly tell lies without getting caught." And that’s a good thing, says Chris Campbell.

Tim Blair on vegetarianism : Back in 2008 Tim Blair linked to a story claiming "Scientists have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain – with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage." Sandy Szwarc wasn’t convinced.

Scientists explain Tim Blair: "You would think we would admire do-gooders who are truly motivated by morals, values and beliefs. But you would be wrong. Recent research compares the attitudes of meat eaters to vegetarians. Meat eaters don’t really like vegetarians. We think they judge us. So we make fun of them." Rita Handrich, The Jury Room.

Irrationality virus spreads to Australia: The Australian conservative movement is becoming infected by an irrationality virus, writes Harry Clarke. It’s "a development which threatens both its intellectual viability and our future."

Bringing back tram conductors: The Greens want to bring back Melbourne’s tram conductors. But Alan Davies at the Melbourne Urbanist is unconvinced: "I don’t know why nominally progressive people are so infatuated with this issue. In my opinion, spending $60 million p.a. on improving outer suburban bus services would achieve a lot more environmentally and socially than providing conductors for relatively privileged inner city and inner suburban tram travellers."

Can you get things done without making people hate you? How assertive should managers be? According to recent post at Psyblog, "people who are low in assertiveness get less things done but people very high in assertiveness are socially insufferable". The sweet spot is somewhere in between.

Battle of the think tanks: "Australia’s most prolific and influential think tanks will duke it out over whose ideology and vision for the future should prevail" at an event hosted by Thought Broker on Saturday November 12. Via Andrew Norton.

Creative destruction: Most ideas in business are bad ideas, says Karl Smith. So "what you need is a process that destroys as many bad ideas as possible, leaving the rare good idea to prosper." That process is the market.

Is this what you want for your daughter? A US senate candidate offers some advice to wives. Be "a lady in the living room and a whore in the bedroom". What does that mean? Marina Adshade spells it out.

Is inequality stifling innovation? "Perhaps we’re not having much innovation because our median incomes aren’t growing fast enough", suggests Matthew Yglesias.

Equality of opportunity? US Senator Paul Ryan believes in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome — the idea that "justice is done when we level the playing field at the starting line, and rewards are proportionate to merit and effort." But a belief in equality of opportunity and strident opposition to redistribution just doesn’t make sense, argues Matthew Yglesias.

Rawls and the protesters: Philosopher John Rawls would make a "perfect intellectual touchstone" for the Occupy Wall Street protests, writes Steven Mazie in the New York Times. But according to Will Wilkinson, Mazie is peddling a watered down version of Rawls’ philosophy.

Arguing about libertarianism: Libertarians insist their philosophy is founded on the value of liberty. But they’re wrong, says T.M. Scanlon. Scanlon leads of the Boston Review’s forum on libertarianism and liberty. Brad DeLong and Will Wilkinson respond.

A feminist spokeswoman for Generation X? Matt Honan says Generation X hasn’t had a real voice since Axl Rose got fat. Mindy says she "wouldn’t kick him out of bed, unless he was nasty to the cat." But how about a feminist voice for Generation X, she asks. Any suggestions?

The New Atheists are nuts: The "the hostility of militant atheists to religion borders on madness", says David Berreby.

Advertising is exploitation: When businesses like Facebook sell our personal information to third parties, "Things that we find valuable are being stripped away from us without our consent or adequate compensation". The Philosopher’s Beard wants a new property rights regime.

The value of work: Work is about more than just income, argues Peter Shergold. So when not-for-profits look at the impact of their welfare to work programs, they should look beyond income to things like improvements in health, improved family stability, and longer term intergenerational impacts.

Why do highly educated American women have more children? According to a recent US study, there’s a U-shaped relationship between a woman’s education and her total lifetime fertility. The reason is inequality. The real incomes of low paid workers has fallen significantly since the 1970s. And as Marina Adshade explains :

This fall in wages of unskilled workers combined with an increase in the wages paid to the highly educate has meant that women with more education can now afford to buy on the market the services that other mothers (and presumably fathers) have to supply themselves.

Does inequality drive political polarisation? The correlation between the share of income earned by the top one percent and polarisation in US politics is staggering writes Erik Voeten. Voeten links to Polarized America, a new book by Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal.

Economists are out-blogging political scientists: Economic blogs support serious discussion about economic research. Political science blogs most just publicise political science research, argues John Sides.

The top one per cent: "One of the most striking successes of the Occupy Wall Street movement has been the ‘We are the 99 per cent’ idea, and more specifically in the identification of the top 1 per cent as the primary source of economic problems." John Quiggin.

Who are the top one per cent? According to Dave Gilson at Mother Jones, they’re not all Wall Street execs.

Why aren’t rich people hiring servants? The Atlantic’s Megan McCardle suggests six reasons why increasing inequality and unemployment in the US hasn’t led to a rise in the number servants.

Mary Poppins? "Some British nannies specify that they only fly business class — though many have use of the family planes", reports Robert Frank in the Wall Street Journal.

Did Steve Jobs give good advice? "’Find what you love and never settle for less’ is an excellent recipe for frustration and poverty", advises Will Wilkinson.

Good news, bad news: "Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been struck by a series of good news stories that have accidentally been reported as bad news stories" writes Jeremy Williams at Post Growth.

Journalists are self-righteous hypocrites, says Mr Denmore: "Yes, freedom of speech and a free press are critical to democracy. But I find it hard to rally around the freedom flag when so many are silent in the face of journalism that uses spin and distortion and outright lies in aid of an agenda to smear the least advantaged and most voiceless in our community; of journalism that champions freedom without reference to relative power relationships." Mr Denmore on journalists’ response to the Bolt judgment.

Rudeness: British PM David Cameron thinks rudeness is on the rise. He wants government to help foster responsibility and stronger communities. But according to the Philosopher’s Beard: "This whole approach is based on a mistaken idea about rudeness, that there are rude people and normal people, and that something must be done about the rude people to make them more normal."

I’m a bit tied up today so this week’s missing link belongs to you. Post your links in the comments thread.

I love you so much … that I’m going to ruin your life: Tigtog on the perils of manipulative relationships.

The five stages of Gillard grief: "The stages of grief when a political leader is doomed differ a little in sequence from the classic Kubler-Ross order", says John Quiggin.

Michael Stutchbury returns to the Fin: "The Australian Financial Review has launched another successful raid on The Australian, announcing Michael Stutchbury as editor-in-chief of the newspaper", reports Mumbrella.

Why is the new Kindle Fire so cheap?: "The battle of the tablets is not a battle of devices, but a battle of ecosystems", argues Erik Brynjolfsson at Digitopoly. Amazon can afford to sell Kindle’s at a low price because "the profit stream from Amazon’s media products is boosted every time another customer buys a Kindle".

Why not use cheap content to sell expensive tablets? Responding to a post by Matt Yglesias, Joshua Gans offers a rationale for Amazon’s business model.

It’s obvious (once you know the answer): Common sense makes the world seem more orderly than it really is, writes Duncan Watts at Freakonomics.

Maybe we could automate Missing Link: Chris Wilson builds a robotic replacement for blogger Jason Kottke. According to Farhad Manjoo, it’s not doing too badly.

Is gender equality driving down the price of sex? Women trade sex for resources, argues psychologist Roy Baumeister. "Historically, women have restricted each other’s sexuality in order to make the price of sex high".

Roy Baumeister’s bad economics: Baumeister’s theory is "not an economic model and if it was it wouldn’t be a very good one" argues Marina Adshade at Dollars and Sex.

Freedom & fidelity: At Tiger Beatdown, Flavia Dzodan wonders: "can cheating, for a woman, ever be an act of liberating, or dare I say it, empowering rebellion?"

Economics as a branch of moral philosophy: "Utilitarians are supposed to maximise the good, not good intentions; which makes inefficiency a kind of vice", says the Philosopher’s Beard. Being a good utilitarian means taking advantage of the analytic tools of economics.

Left-wing hypocrisy on immigration? Also at the Philosopher’s Beard; without immigration controls the welfare state would collapse. Conservative opposition to immigration "allows liberals to get away with the hypocrisy of depending on immigration controls while pretending that they are against them."

Futile arguments about the definition of liberty: Libertarians generally define liberty as non-coercion. But they "rely on a tendentiously loaded conception of coercion that simply stipulates that commonsense forms of emotional, psychological, and social coercion aren’t really coercive in the relevant sense", says Will Wilkinson. And it’s not just libertarians who bend concepts to justify their preferred political arrangements.

Inequality and immortality: What happens to inequality when death becomes optional, wonders Robin Hanson. Not only would rich people have more time to accumulate wealth but the resulting inequality would have less to do with parental luck, and more to do with personal merit. Would that be good or bad?

New public management has been a disaster: "It is time to re-conceptualise public service goals as the outcome of social processes", argues Matthew Taylor at the RSA.

How Robert Putnam helped create the Tea Party: Without Meetup.com, the Tea Party might never have got off the ground. Putnam’s ideas inspired Scott Heiferman to create it, writes Henry Farrell.

The equalities industry: "Like the witch-finders of the seventeenth century, equalities campaigners increasingly find evidence of evil-doing where the rest of us didn’t even realise we had a problem", writes ‘bad’ Peter Saunders.

Will Wilkinson has a new blog: It’s at Big Think and it’s called The Moral Sciences Club.

Stephanie Trigg has a new bike: "My bike is a thing of beauty," writes Stephanie , "sleek and silvery, but with lovely old-school touches of leather and wood."

The Second-Hand Persian Cat: Mr Teddington Blush Senior "has begun to show the horrific ravages of age on an almost spectacular scale."

Who is my stranger? Even on the left most people believe we have stronger obligations towards our fellow citizens than we have towards outsiders. But why does the nation state mark the boundary that divides ‘us’ from ‘them’? At Overcoming Bias Robin Hanson argues that libertarians also accept stronger obligations towards insiders. They just draw the boundary in a different place.

Australia’s changing labour market: "In the past year 101,500 extra jobs have been found for women, only 38,900 for men", writes Peter Martin.

The Internet is a scary place to be a feminist: And it’s not just the misogynistic commenters. According to Blue Milk: "your feminism probably naturally evolves but the Internet records everything. Take a position on something and you can never let that go, even when you change your mind years later."

Is China’s imminent collapse imminent? John Quiggin isn’t sure. In an article titled ‘China’s imminent collapse‘ he argues that "authoritarian governments may be much more fragile than they appear." A sudden slowdown in economic growth could see China’s oligarchic regime suddenly breakdown but there’s know way of telling how and when that might happen. Quiggin didn’t write the headline.

Creepy guys in elevators : If a man you didn’t know propositioned you in a hotel elevator at four in the morning, would you find that a little creepy? Rebecca Watson did. It happened to her after she gave a talk about misogyny in the atheist movement. As she said in video later, "Just a word to the wise here guys. Don’t do that."

Wafergate: A few years ago, atheist PZ Myers pierced a communion wafer with a nail and threw it in the trash along with some old coffee grounds and a banana peel. Not surprisingly, many Catholics were offended. But of course offending theists is part of what the militant atheist movement is all about.

Elevatorgate: Militant atheist Richard Dawkins was annoyed by Watson’s complaints. In a comment on PZ Myers blog he argued that the guy in the elevator did nothing more than speak to her: "If she felt his behaviour was creepy, that was her privilege, just as it was the Catholics’ privilege to feel offended and hurt when PZ nailed the cracker."

It usually begins with Ayn Rand: When Alyssa Bereznak’s parents split up, her father included a firm instruction in the divorce papers: Alyssa’s mother was forbidden to raise her or her brother religiously. In Salon Bereznak writes about how her father’s obsession with Ayn Rand blighted her childhood. "Ultimately, I suspect Dad was drawn to objectivism because, unlike so many altruistic faiths, it made him feel good about being selfish", she writes.

But ends up as another internet controversy: When geek legend Jon Finkel discovered Bereznak’s profile on OKCupid he decided to ask her out. She accepted. Finkel googled her before the date. "She had a pretty good, heartfelt article about her dad and Ayn Rand" he says.

Unfortunately the googling wasn’t reciprocal . So when Finkel told Bereznak he was a world champion Magic: The Gathering player she was so appalled she ended up writing an article for Gizmodo about it. Surely this is something a person ought to disclose in their online profile, she insisted.

Was that wrong? At Tiger Beatdown, Sady argues it was wrong for Bereznak to name Finkel in her article. She offers some advice: "Disguise the identity of your bad dates, when you write about them on the Internet. They have friends and family and co-workers that they have to face in the morning."

But despite some of the nasty comments Bereznak has been getting on internet forums, there’s nothing wrong with rejecting a date because you don’t share their interests, says Sady: "Sorry, friends: People get to find your interests unattractive sometimes. That’s the way it works."

Back at Skepticlawyer’s: In the comments thread to Skepticlawyer’s post, a different perspective about geeks and dating emerges. "Fascinating post," says su, "this is something I am trying to teach my teenager who does have Asperger’s. He keeps coming up with different ways to approach girls that he likes and they are always rather indirect and yet invasive."

Patrick suggests a self-help book. Skepticlawyer agrees: "How to Win Friends and Influence People helped me a great deal at the beginning of my legal career", she writes.

The fatosphere: Fat acceptance blogs can improve health outcomes according to a recent study. Sunanda Creagh reports.

Why inequality is like cholesterol: Matt Cowgill and Mark Bahnisch discuss a new book by Branko Milanovic.

Becker on good and bad inequality: "Attractive public policies encourage the good earnings inequality and attack the bad inequality through laws, taxes and subsidies, and in other ways" writes Gary Becker.

Posner on inequality and envy: "The position one occupies in the distribution of income and health is largely a matter of luck" writes Richard Posner.

The happy poor? Are poor people are happy because they’re less materialistic and more focused on relationships? It’s unlikely says Anna Barford. And even if they were that wouldn’t make it ok.

Sinclair Davidson on food stamps: It’s "a standard microeconomic result that food stamp programs are economically inefficient – if you’re going to hand out welfare it’s best to simply hand out cash" says Sinclair Davidson.

Libertarian anticapitalism: Can you support free markets but oppose American capitalism? Charles Johnson says yes.

College students shun librarians and turn to Google: But according to a recent US study, students are: "basically clueless about the logic underlying how the search engine organizes and displays its results".

House prices: Australian house prices will be flat in income-adjusted terms for next 10 years, says Christopher Joye.

Paul Lockyer & quality journalism: Paul Lockyer’s "documentary on the Queensland floods this year was just simply outstanding", said Laura Tingle last month. The veteran ABC journalist was part of her top 10 quality journalism sources in Australia.

In April Alan Knight wrote: "Lockyer had been in the ABC helicopter in central Queensland, covering the flood crisis , when he heard of a disaster, across the Great Dividing Range in the Lockyer valley. They set out at first light. The ABC pilot, Gary Ticehurst dodged the thunderstorms, found a hole in the clouds and landed on a patch of dry land near the smashed pub at Grantham."

Today the ABC reports: "Journalist Paul Lockyer, pilot Gary Ticehurst, and cameraman John Bean are believed to have been killed when their chopper crashed near Lake Eyre yesterday evening."

Creative bankruptcy at 7.30: The ABC’s current affairs show 7.30 is boring. Hungry Beast is interesting. Mr Denmore Explains.

Bias in the journosphere? At Larvatus Prodeo, Kim wonders why panelists on the ABC’s Drum seem so willing to swallow self-serving business propaganda: "Sure, they’re socially liberal, but it’s insane to call these folks left wing. They *are* the inner city dwelling latte sippers of legend, well paid, socially ‘tolerant’, and probably fitting best politically into the more milquetoast faction of the now departed Democrats."

Beer And Neoliberalism: Thanks to craft breweries, American beer is a lot better than it used to be. That’s good for beer drinkers but bad for unions. Matthew Yglesias explains.

Skepticlawyer is "spectacularly irritated": It turns out that one of the alleged London rioters studied at Oxford and has a Masters degree in Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies from the LSE. "At least the little snot went to St John’s, not Brasenose", writes Skepticlawyer. Commenter John H links to a debate over advocacy driven research at Science 2.0.

Disability as an economic cost? The Australian government spends billions of dollars supporting people with disabilities, writes Carl Thompson at Working at Perfect. But "proper disability support is not an economic cost, but rather an economic benefit. A benefit that actually pumps money into the economy and reduces unemployment."

Measuring poverty: Is it important to measure the poverty rate? Lane Kenworthy suggests an alternative.

Are corporations people? No they’re not says Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry: "if corporations are people, it means we’ve reinstated slavery, because corporations are bought, sold and even killed by their owners every day."

Andrew Norton’s new blog: With a new job at the Grattan Insititute, Andrew Norton has decided to start a new blog. He writes: "as one of Grattan’s public faces I need to make sure that my blogging doesn’t detract from Grattan’s focus on areas where ‘fact-based analysis’ can contribute to public debate." The new blog is here.

Quote snatching: Brooks Bayne tweets a popular quote from Adam Smith: "The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations." But did Adam Smith actually say this? Probably not. So who coined the phrase "poverty of aspiration"? Was it Aneurin Bevan? Ernest Bevin? Harlan Douglass? Does anyone know?

Austerity and Social Protest: Governments might not be punished for budget cuts in the polls, but austerity measures are not cost free, argue Jacopo Ponticelli and Hans-Joachim Voth. In a recent paper they argue that "Expenditure cuts carry a significant risk of increasing the frequency of riots, anti-government demonstrations, general strikes, political assassinations, and attempts at revolutionary overthrow of the established order." (Via: Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber.)

Rioting for fun and profit: "A riot can bring out both the best and the worst in people", writes Johnney Void. While setting fire to shops with flats above them might be "really f#*@%g stupid", Void thinks the riots were mostly good fun. Most of the kids "were caught up in the delirium that came with showing, if only for a few nights, that they were not powerless. Kids with little to lose and little to hope for owned London, just for a while. And they can do it again".

Fierce inarticulate aggression: "Dating back to the first time I was mugged as a 16-year-old, by children my own age in a daylit Dalston street, I have never feared any adult as much as I’ve feared children on London’s streets", writes Will Davies at Potlatch.

Many Londoners aren’t surprised by the riots, he says. Isolated incidents have been happening for some time. There’s a surreal form of cultural apartheid flowing from gentrification, he writes. "The symptoms are familiar: fierce inarticulate aggression bordering on sadism, destruction as a form of creativity, sufficient boredom that an entire evening can be dedicated to hounding a single innocent individual, terrifying group norms whereby a 16-year-old is leading a pack of 14-year-olds." (Via: Mark Bahnisch at Larvatus Prodeo.)

Words can hurt: Gossip is dangerous says Robin Hanson. But many libertarians insist" that law should limit its attention to ‘physical’, not info, property and harms".

Hanson wonders "if, as kids, libertarians tended to be witty weaklings – losing most fair physical fights, but winning most fair verbal sparring. Perhaps such kids prefer everyone to embrace the slogan ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me,’ because then the people they hurt via words can’t complain, because they can’t even admit they were hurt."

(Un)making your own luck: You’d think that winning big in the lottery would help indebted people avoid bankruptcy. But according to a group of US researchers: "A comparison of Florida Lottery winners who randomly received $50,000 to $150,000 to small winners indicates that such transfers only postpone bankruptcy rather than prevent it". (Via: Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution.)

It pays to be fat? A recent post by Marina Adshade stirs up controversy. Citing a paper by health economist Heather Brown, she writes: "Employers may punish women who are obese with lower wages, but not all women are paying a penalty. Single women who are obese earn higher wages because they invest more in unobservable job skills. Why? Because heavy women have to plan on never having a husband to help pay the bills."

Wood tape: Sometimes it feels great to be able to listen to your children, writes Spilt Milk. "I’m not so great at it, sometimes, but when it works — well, those are the nights I go to bed knowing I have loved and been loved well", she says. Wondering about the ‘wood tape’? Click through Spilt Milk to the story by Scott and all will be revealed.

No such thing as bad publicity? "I’ve received the ultimate accolade from News Corporation", writes economist John Quiggin. As Paul Krugman notes in the New York Times, Quiggin "has received a full sliming from the Murdoch empire." More here, here, here and here.

What’s the biggest benefit of a liberal arts education? For many America’s undergraduates, it’s learning how to intellectualize your "own life choices in a way that belittles others and enforces class barriers." Or at least, that’s the conclusion Ed at Ginandtacos draws from a recent story in the Huffington Post.

Electric wheelchair etiquette: "I never collide with anyone," writes Carl, "at least not when I’m sober." At Working at Perfect Carl explores the unwritten rules of driving an electric wheelchair on roads and footpaths.

Are there no limits to Kevin’s power? At Catallaxy Files Sinclair Davidson posts a graph showing how Labor’s abolition of Work Choices caused the global financial crisis … or something like that.

UPDATE: Sinclair Davidson responds "Don Arthur over at Club Troppo interprets this graph as showing that Kevin Rudd caused the GFC. Don is one of the more smarter social democrats, so it’s unsurprising they can’t handle money or manage an economy."

Virtual horses at risk of starvation: Virtual horses in the online game Second Life may starve if the real life company that sells their virtual feed loses a real life court battle. Legal Eagle explains at Skepticlawyer.

Furry Fandom: Anthrocon is the world’s largest convention for people fascinated with humanlike animal characters. Held in Pittsburgh, the 2011 convention attracted more than 4,500 ‘furries’, some of them dressed as their favourite characters.

Canadian blogger and fantasy author Heidi Vlach went along to promote her new novel. "I think it’s unfortunate that the furry community so often gets a bad rap", she writes. "Many people are only aware of furries as a bunch of perverts in animal suits. But I’ve found it to be a community that accepts everyone as they are."

Conventional beauty : Ms. Blog’s Natalie Wilson visited Comic-Con and was troubled to see so many women ‘cosplayers‘ "with massive fake boobs and massively thin bodies posing for photos with leering men."

So he thinks he’s a power drill? When men are shown pictures of scantily clad women, the region of the brain associated with tool use lights up, says psychologist Susan Fiske. According to a 2009 report in the Guardian, Fiske "said the changes in brain activity suggest sexy images can shift the way men perceive women, turning them from people to interact with, to objects to act upon."

For Marcel that’s just one more reason why women shouldn’t post pictures of themselves in bathing suits on Facebook: "A note to young women on Facebook, from a guy who works with young men struggling with pornography…you might look good in your bathing suit, but if you were able to see yourself through 20 year-old male eyes, which are struggling to see you as a human and not an object, you would never post that pic."

At Feministe, Jill responds: "look, if dudes see women as not-quite-human, what you wear isn’t going to change that. And if it does change it, then dude has a problem. Why do you want to hang out with a guy who sees you as a ‘full human being’ only so long as you’re wearing a loose floor-length skirt and an oversize turtleneck?"

Terrorising terrorists: At Comic-Con Frank Miller unveiled his long delayed response to 9/11 the graphic novel Holy Terror. Featuring a Dirty Harry inspired superhero, Miller has described the project as "a piece of propaganda". Originally conceived as Batman’s struggle against Al-Qaeda terrorists, Miller eventually decided the caped crusader wasn’t up to the job: "This character is much more well adjusted in committing terrible acts of violence on very evil people" he said.

Ben Peek has a question: "Do all comic book authors become increasingly right wing and crazy as they get older?"