Links roundup, 27 February - 5 March 2013

An asylum seeker has been charged with indecent assault. The opposition has taken the opportunity to call for special checks and "behaviour protocols" to be applied to all asylum seekers living in the community while their claims are processed. Unfortunately for this proposal, of the 12,100 asylum seekers released since November 2011, no more than 5 have been charged with a crime, making those on bridging visas 45 times less likely to be charged than everyone else living here. The reporting requirements the Coalition demand have long been in place. "We have behaviour protocols," remarked Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. "It's called the law."

An insightful and disturbing opinion piece on the scapegoating of asylum seekers via the Pacific Solution.

An exasperated psychologist rants about journalists telling us our brains are defective, when the explanation for why we know what ain't so is not neurological, but social. Our "social networks", he writes, are reliable at steering us towards the scientific information we need, but when the facts "become entangled in antagonistic cultural meanings" then "positions on these issues will come to be understood as markers of loyalty to opposing groups". And that's why you can't come in our treehouse.

Meet the youngest person in Afghanistan to have a gender reassignment surgery. (I think the sixteen year old was intersex - it's difficult to tell from the original report in the Lahore Times.)

A petition to the White House to Recognize non-binary genders in legal documents etc.

Finally, via New Scientist's giggle-inducing Feedback column, two splendid quotes from the papers about prime numbers. First, the Daily FMail described primes as "of little significance". Even better, the Independent remarked: "Even the most powerful computers struggle to work out the factors of a large prime number."