FEMALE SCIENTIST CALLS FOR ban on sex robots. “She believes that they reinforce traditional stereotypes of women and the view that a relationship need be nothing more than physical.”

How does she feel about vibrators?

CIVIL RIGHTS UPDATE: Houston Zoo forced to remove “No Guns” signs.

NEW FROM JONATHAN HAIDT: It’s finally out–The big review paper on the lack of political diversity in social psychology.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Liberals bemoan new campus rape law which could involve police in prosecuting crimes.

AT AMAZON, Fall Deals in Men’s Clothing.

THE CARNIVAL OF NUCLEAR ENERGY IS UP!

IVY LEAGUE PROFESSOR GIVES STUDENTS THE ALF TEST:

Like a lot of professors in 2015, Columbia professor Joseph Howley had a problem with students “class shopping.”

Some would sign up for his class only to see if it was easy, then bail after the first session if it wasn’t. But only Howley thought to counter this quiet menace with something that could stop it: a cat-eating space alien who was expelled from Earth to face his inevitable death in 1990.

The assistant classics professor stuck a command for his students to send him a picture of Alf—the ’80s sitcom star and alien from the planet Melmac—into the middle of his syllabus to see if anybody noticed.

From the number of Alf images he received, he figured he’d be able to find out early on if he’d have enough students to keep the class engaged, or even to keep it going. And maybe, he thought, he’d teach them something along the way.

So did it work?

“Eight out of 20 have [responded] so far,” he said. “I don’t know what to make of that.”

Sounds like the Van Halen brown M&Ms test, which was there as a safety check to see if promoters had read the contract to ensure that the stadium had been properly configured for the band’s highly complex stage and light show, reconfigured to see if college students are paying attention.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Hundreds Of Colleges Provide No Earnings Boost. “Smart people make more money because they can do more. College does not make you smarter. Colleges with lower standards offer a way to get a degree without being very bright. . . . Kids who aren’t too bright are being economically harmed by delaying work to go to colleges where they won’t learn anything useful.”

Do tell.

WHO KNEW THE PUBLISHING INDUSTRY WAS SUCH A FEVER SWAMP HOTBED OF RACISM, SEXISM, AND HOMOPHOBIA? An Insta-reader forwards this Publisher’s Weekly-distributed survey, which was sent via the following email:

Dear *****
As part of our commitment to creating a diverse and inclusive work force, Publishers Weekly will be participating in the industry-wide Diversity Baseline Survey. This survey will examine several facets of staff diversity within the publishing industry including race, gender, sexual orientation, and disabilities. We hope this survey will give the publishing industry a better understanding of staff makeup and help all of us focus and improve our efforts to increase diversity. Adding more diversity to publishing’s ranks is a goal PW fully supports. To help move the process forward I hope you can spend a few minutes to take part in the following survey.

The link below will take you to a short 5-minute survey. This survey is being administered by Dr. Sarah Park Dahlen at St. Catherine University in Minnesota, and your individual answers to this survey will remain completely anonymous. Only the researchers handling this study at St. Catherine University will have access to full survey responses. Publisher’s Weekly will see their own numbers, but only in aggregate.

Please fill out the survey by September 30, 2015.

The survey is here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7QY2K6T

The survey itself begins by claiming:

Publishing suffers from a major diversity problem. It is obvious that the vast majority of books published are by white authors and about white characters. The majority of the staff behind the scenes, which includes publishers’ employees, and reviewers, are white. For decades there has been overwhelming agreement in the industry that there should be more diversity at all levels and in all areas of the book world, but even with greater awareness, the problem never seems to go away. Is this problem too big to solve?The answer is, we have no idea how big the problem is. While there is now data available about diversity among books published, there is still no data available about diversity among publishing staff and reviewers.

As in any business, when you have a problem you must understand it before you can solve it. Our goal with the Diversity Baseline Survey is to establish a baseline that shows where we are now. To learn more go here.

A Word About Privacy: Your individual answers to this survey will remain completely anonymous. Only the researchers handling this study at St. Catherine University will have access to full survey responses. Publisher’s Weekly will see their own numbers, but only in aggregate.

If you have any other questions contact, Jason Low, . Otherwise, let us begin.

Things get even more…interesting...here:

Gosh — who knew there were so many choices? Or perhaps, there aren’t enough! It’s all so highly, highly problematic.

By the way, does increasing diversity apply to all industries? Instead of reflexively recruiting giants, it’s high time that the NBA forward a team, or the NFL an offensive line, that consisted of men the size of Woody Allen, Paul Simon, Wallace Shawn, and Peter Dinklage. Perhaps throw in Linda Hunt as well, for extra-added diversity.

UPDATE: As another Insta-reader mentioned to me via Twitter, “‘Publishing suffers from a major diversity problem,’ and ‘we have no idea how big the problem is’ are contradictory statements–prima facie proof of expectation bias.”

STARBUCKS APOLOGIZES TO PHILLY COP AFTER HIS FACEBOOK POST ON BEING RUDELY DENIED RESTROOM ACCESS GOES VIRAL.

Earlier: Arby’s manager fired after drive-thru worker in Florida allegedly refused to serve a police officer just because she was a cop.

And to think Starbucks’ CEO was briefly counting on his “baristas” to lecture us all on race and civility.

THIS SHOULD BE GOOD FOR AT LEAST ANOTHER TEN POINTS FOR TRUMP: L.A. Touts Itself as “Northern Capital of Latin America” for 2024 Olympic Bid.

10TH PLANNED PARENTHOOD VIDEO: FRESH HEARTS, EYES AND GONADS FOR SALE: “Certainly, everything we provide — oh, gonads! Oh my God, gonads. Everything we provide is fresh.”

Pro Tip: if you’re using a line that sounds like it could be dialogue out of The Silence of the Lambs, you might want to consider if perhaps, you might be working for the bad guys.

PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS HARDEST HIT: Wall Street’s latest panic: Trump could win:

The CEO of one large Wall Street firm, who declined to be identified by name criticizing the GOP front-runner, said the assumption in the financial industry remains that something will eventually knock Trump off and send voters toward a more establishment candidate. But that assumption is no longer held with strong conviction. And a dozen Wall Street executives interviewed for this article could not say what might dent Trump’s appeal or when it might happen.

“I don’t know anyone who is a Donald Trump supporter. I don’t know anyone who knows anyone who is a Donald Trump supporter. They are like this huge mystery group,” the CEO said. [Shades of Pauline Kael! — Ed] “So it’s a combination of shock and bewilderment. No one really knows why this is happening. But my own belief is that the laws of gravity will apply and those who are prepared to run the marathon will benefit when Trump drops out at mile 22. Right now people think Trump is pretty hilarious but the longer it goes on the more frightening it gets.”

The latest frightening broadside for the Wall Street class came on Sunday when Trump said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that executive pay in America is “a complete joke” and promised to raise taxes on “the hedge fund guys.” In a statement sent to POLITICO on Monday from his campaign, Trump relished in the attacks from Wall Street, singling out both Bush and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, another favorite on Wall Street.

“Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton will continue to let Wall Street and the ‘hedge fund guys’ rip off the people by paying no or very little in taxes,” Trump said. “They have total and complete control of Hillary, Jeb and others running. My campaign is self- funded. The only people that have control of me are the people of the United States.”

By the time of the 2008 election, Wall Street abandoned Republicans, preferring Michael Bloomberg’s nanny state and Barack Obama’s arugula to the GOP’s traditional values, as Kevin D. Williamson wrote the following year:

Wall Street isn’t politically agnostic, and there’s more to its politics than money. Culture matters, and you won’t find a lot of Pentecostal churches in Greenwich, Conn. Wall Street guys, for the most part, do not have time for social conservatives. “Of course these guys aren’t conservative,” says one longtime bond trader. “Why the [expletive deleted] would they be? We’re talking about guys who live in Manhattan, guys with manicures and eight-figure bank balances. And their wives–their wives aren’t showing up at parents’ day at Brearley with a Sarah Palin button. It’d be like showing up in flip-flops from Wal-Mart. Like showing up in a [rather lengthier expletive deleted] tracksuit.”

This cultural divide is particularly visible in New York City politics. “Ten to 15 years ago, half of the Upper East Side [officeholders] were Republican,” says John Mills, executive vice president of the Lexington Democratic Club. “There’s not one Republican there now. Abortion and gay rights are two of the biggest issues, and there are a lot of Jewish voters here not comfortable with Christian conservatives.”

Wall Street has no love for the southern, rural, and evangelical. But it’s not just the Jesus stuff–the southern and rural parts matter, too: Republican congressmen tend to represent places like Glasscock County, Texas, America’s most Republican jurisdiction, which reliably gives 90-odd percent of its votes to the GOP. Those districts are not going to feel the pain of the financial markets the way New York, New Jersey, California, and Connecticut are. The bailout is not very popular in farm country. Wall Street knew there was a gathering storm in the markets, and it didn’t want to find itself at the mercy of small-town and rural Republicans’ riding to the rescue.

And thus, the birth of the man Glenn likes to call “President Goldman Sachs.”

As Kevin noted, Wall Street abandoned the American heartland in 2008, so it shouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that someone showing up with an anti-Wall Street message resonates with voters there. I’m disappointed it’s a rather punitive and populist message than a conservative one, but historically, fire and brimstone populism has always allowed a candidate to position himself as the champion to a large group of disenfranchised voters.

CHANGE: Now Anyone Can Sell Stuff On Twitter Directly In The App.

AT AMAZON, take an extra 30% off already-reduced jewelry.

Plus, deals on Men’s Sneakers.

HOW DONALD TRUMP FIGURED OUT THE VALUE OF #SORRYNOTSORRY:

It seems to me that this is a wonderful game for the media to play, but the candidate is always the loser. And the reason is that when you apologize, no matter how sincere it may or may not be, the public only hears the admission that you were wrong. And despite your remorse over your error, you are now the person who was wrong. Given the unrealistic expectations we place on candidates in general, that’s not the best tag to have sewn on your jacket.

Contrast that with Trump. He’s been declared to have broken the rules now more times than I can count without the help of a Cray supercomputer. One of the more famous examples was when he seemingly implied that Megyn Kelly was on her time of the month during the first debate. You can argue for the next fourteen months whether or not that’s what he really meant, but the media latched onto it like a bull terrier. And yet when the reporters came to ask if he wanted to apologize, Trump basically told them, screw that. She should apologize to me!

For better or worse, Trump maintains a rock steady course of projected self-confidence, insisting that he’s right and anyone who disagrees with him must therefore be wrong. And the fact is, people respond to that. They don’t want some “loser” marching up to the microphone with a hangdog look on their face saying I’m sorry. They want a winner who tells them that things are going to get better. And that’s what Trump delivers.

It’s an idea that’s reminiscent of some other famous non-apologists. I’m reminded of one of Andrew Breitbart’s final tweets before he died, in which he simply asked, “Apologize for what?”

Perhaps by being fixture in the white-hot media world of Manhattan since the 1980s, Trump knows how the game is played in the MSM, and seems to have mastered it. Of course, Leon Wolf’s theory that “Donald Trump is the political equivalent of chaff, a billion shiny objects all floating through the sky at once, ephemeral, practically without substance, serving almost exclusively to distract from more important things – yet nonetheless completely impossible to ignore,” is also true as well. Yes Trump says a lot of crazy stuff (such as his slur against Kelly), but kudos to him for not apologizing and simply plowing on, rather than play by the MSM rules that have hamstrung other Republican candidates.

UPDATE: Trump as Political Pick-Up Artist: The Donald is “Negging” His Rivals Brilliantly: “The billionaire’s insult-laced patter is straight outta a scurrilous dating scene,” Nick Gillespie writes at Reason.

OH, IT’S BEEN A LIFESAVER FOR A LOT OF US: Oral sex may be a life saver for spider.

WHY IS AIR TRAVEL THE OBJECT OF SO MANY COMPLAINTS? “Not too long ago, flying could be a relatively pleasant experience, but executives focused on cutting costs have stripped away everything flyers associated with luxury or even dignity. Food, baggage handling, boarding in a logical manner: Things once taken for granted now must be paid for or done without. Flights are more crowded than they’ve been since World War II, when they were carrying troops.”

MICHAEL BARONE: Fecklessness 101: Obama in the Middle East.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Why You Shouldn’t Bother with a $699 Cancer Test.

JEFF BEZOS’ SPACE COMPANY, BLUE ORIGIN, will be launching from Florida. This adds to the Texas v. California space race.

TERROR ROAD: This Wildfire Escape Video Is a Drive Through Hell on Earth. “Wildfires are conceptually terrifying, but seeing one from the inside, up close and with a first-person view really brings home the horrific reality. Everything is on fire, and it’s only getting worse.”

WELL, THIS ISN’T GOOD: Hundreds Quarantined as Ebola Returns to Sierra Leone District.

THESE PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS: “Apparently the Obama administration turned down a [2012] Russian offer to dump Assad… because the Administration was sure he was going to fall on his own.” Plus:

If true, this was a staggering missed opportunity. The President’s string of misjudgments on the Middle East—on the peace process, Erdogan, withdrawal from Iraq, Libya, ISIS as the “J.V. team”, and Syria—is one of the most striking examples of serial failure in the annals of American foreign policy.

Generally speaking, what the President seems worst at is estimating the direction in which events are flowing. He thought Erdogan was taking Turkey in one direction; Erdogan was going somewhere else. He thought there was a transition to democracy in Egypt; there never was a prospect of that. He has repeatedly been caught flatfooted by events in Syria. And Putin keeps running rings around him.

Understanding the intentions and estimating the capabilities of people who don’t share his worldview are not our President’s strong suits.

No. Related item here.

BRADLEY AREHEART: Accommodating Pregnancy.