Spreading misinformation does not add to the discourse. There is no program to provide SSN to illegal immigrants. SSN is only provided to people who are allowed to work in the US.

Even dependents of LEGAL US temporary workers cannot get social security cards as they are not allowed to work here.

But going back to Lou Dobbs and his following, it is always amusing to see "free-market"-ers go all ballistic at the "I" word.

Based on my sample population (which is definitely not more skewed than a sample of 49 Polish women), this definitely seems to be the case.

Anything but! Show me one Hollywood movie where the protagonists deck themselves up in outlandish costumes and dance and sing behind trees and fountains. Hollywood, with its excesses and its commericalization, is still way more creative in its handling of diverse subjects than Bollywood can ever aspire to be.

The Nigerian viewer is right about Hindi movies changing - but not about the nature of the change. Hindi movies are not becoming more "western" The film-makers of the 60's were probably more influenced by western ideas than the ones today. But whereas in the 50's and 60's, films tried to act as the social conscience of a young nation grappling with poverty and a million other issues, movies today have protagonists who live in houses the size of the Buckingham Palace and move around in helicopters. But they still romp behind trees.

Oh and by the way, as far as influence goes, Bollywood reached far and wide - not just Africa. There is a book called "Hindi-style songs revealed" about the influence of hindi films and film music in Greece.

You are right, I should not have used the phrase "controlled study" in my post. I did not mean this in the sense of a study with a control group and a test group. What I meant to say was that when you have a huge number of people on the internet, there might be a gazillion control variables that you have not accounted for - maybe not experience with tetris, but what about level of education? Or ability to manipulate the computer? One of the tests have you clicking on lines that form a set of closely-spaced radii of a semicircle - and heck I can't get that right with this touchpad on my laptop that has a mind of its own.

Even otherwise, there are way too many issues with getting your subjects from an anonymous internet population.

That bit about "jealousy" would have made me spill my coffee if I had been drinking it. No sweetheart, I am not "jealous" of Al Gore. He is too far beyond the reaches of the likes of me for me to be "jealous".

I am disappointed in Al Gore, because I cannot deny that the data on his lifestyle belies his rhetoric. Sorry Lynx, you are welcome to your KoolAid.

Extra snarky about people... people in the plural? Who besides your hero?

The simple reason why I will not make claims about my personal actions on an internet forum is that they are not verifiable.

The rest of your post has nothing to do with what I wrote, but you are welcome to wallow in your self-indulgent and self-righteous rhetoric. This is now beyond silly - so goodbye.

Well, I did actually take a look at the paper and there does seem to be several problems

1. This is not a controlled study. Responses were collected over the internet. I am not convinced that makes it a valid study

2. While the paper discusses differences in mean scores between genders and ages and sexual orientation, I did not see anything on differences within each category. So men as a group outperformed women as a group in some areas and vice vesa. But what does the distribution look if you consider just the men or just the women? Are there overlaps between the groups? If the distributions are sharp bell curves then there might be something to look at in terms of gender differences. But studies like these usually tend to have flat wide bell curves - and if that is the case here then sexual differences alone cannot explain the results.

Having said that, I find myself in a position agreeing with many of the "trolls" - these results have nothing to do with how Ms. Lloyd or any of the individual letter writes would perform on the test. Isn't this what feminists have been arguing for a long time when it came to studies on cognitive differences?

And BTW, I did not have the patience to complete the test - so can someone explain to me what the "clasp your hands to see which thumb is over the other" test was doing in there? In our all girls's school, our biology teacher made us go through that experiment to explain dominant/recessive genes. Most of us had our left thumb on top - as that is supposedly the dominant gene. What does this have to do with left/right brain??