Thursday roundup

Chinese oil company f*s up Chad's forests even to the shock of the oil industry.

Germany vilifies working mothers, suffers the demographic consequences.

Is North Carolina dead to moderates?

How is this journalism? They didn't even report on the size and shape of their calves!

Was Jefferson overrated? Pauline Maier's obituary hardly answers the question so you'll have to read her book to find out.

Sleeping pills will f* you up.

Is it really that subversive for women to talk about what they find attractive?

Carolyn's tips for handling bossy in-laws.

Mike Huckabee and Tucker Carlson think childless lives are meaningless:

The most terrifying thing about the article, according to Huckabee was that it might send the (obviously wrong) message that it was actually possible for people who didn't have children to lead a fulfilling life. (Imagine the horror if childless women started to believe that their lives were still worthwhile.) As far as Huckabee is concerned, reproducing is "the highest particular calling that I think we can have as human beings" and anyone who rejects that calling must be in some way lacking. One of the co-hosts, Tucker Carlson, was even more direct in his criticism of the childfree:

Having children means less time for vacations and spin class, where the real meaning in life resides, right? I mean, have you ever seen anything more selfish, decadent and stupid?

Take that ye clever women who choose decadence over duty.

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We've talked about this fascinating phenomenon of people's assuming that their limitations are just universal limitations. The other day I blogged about it with regard to language, and I think I also extended the analogy with regard to science (i.e., physicists arguing that psychology is not science) and humor (boorish dudes stating that women "cannot be" funny). What Elizabeth Spiers here dubs "Lazy Entrepreneur Solipsism" is a similar phenomenon:

It goes something like this:

I, entrepreneur, have never heard of a product like the one I am producing (largely because I did no research, which I don’t need to do, because if there were such a product, surely I would already know about it!), therefore said product must not exist. And I do not personally know anyone addressing this market, therefore this market must be new and fundamentally under-served!

It should be noted that Lazy Entrepreneur Solipsism is a close cousin to Venture Investor Market Viability Irrationality, which dictates that an investor make a funding decision based on whether his wife or kid likes the product. A sample size of one is fine as long as they’re related to me, and I will then extrapolate an entire market from that very special one-person sample. So I’m guessing someone’s wife or kid liked the idea of Bustle.

On the topic of laziness, Sean Carroll calls out people like me for using "scientism" (for example, to describe physicists who don't think psychology is science). I sort-of see his point, but we need to be able to talk about scientific narrow-mindedness.