Links - 31st March 2010

"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." - George Orwell

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Foreign prostitutes rent Malaysian husbands for visas - "Foreign sex workers in Malaysia are paying local men up to $1,500 a month to become their husbands so that they can stay on in the country to ply their trade"
I wonder what they'd pay Singaporeans

Why Behavioral Economists Love Online Games - "Instead of dealing only with historical data, in virtual worlds "you have the power to experiment in real time," Segerstrale says. What happens to demand if you add a 5 percent tax to a product? What if you apply a 5 percent tax to one half of a group and a 7 percent tax to the other half? "You can conduct any experiment you want," he says. "You might discover that women over 35 have a higher tolerance to a tax than males aged 15 to 20—stuff that's just not possible to discover in the real world.""

Schumpeter: Skirting the issue | The Economist - "Numerous studies show that high proportions of women directors coincide with superior corporate performance. But there is little academically accepted evidence of a causal relationship. It may be that thriving firms allow themselves the luxury of attending to social issues such as board diversity, whereas poorly performing ones batten down the hatches... Firms perform worse as the proportion of women on the board increases. There is certainly no shortage of companies capable of producing stellar results with few or no women on the board. LVMH, a successful French luxury-goods group whose customers are mostly women, has had just one female director over the past ten years: Delphine Arnault, daughter of the firm’s chief executive and controlling shareholder... Too many women go into functional roles such as accounting, marketing or human resources early in their careers rather than staying in the mainstream, driving profits"

Saudi Women Have Message for U.S. Envoy - ""The general image of the Arab woman is that she isn't happy," one audience member said. "Well, we're all pretty happy." The room, full of students, faculty members and some professionals, resounded with applause... Many in this region say they resent the American assumption that, given the chance, everyone would live like Americans... "We're not in any way barred from talking to the other sex," said Dr. Nada Jambi, a public health professor. "It's not an absolute wall"... Several women said later that Americans failed to understand that their traditional society was embraced by men and women alike. "There is more male chauvinism in my profession in Europe and America than in my country," said Dr. Siddiqa Kamal, an obstetrician and gynecologist who runs her own hospital. "I don't want to drive a car," she said. "I worked hard for my medical degree. Why do I need a driver's license?" "Women have more than equal rights"... "I love my abaya," she explained. "It's convenient and it can be very fashionable""

Reporting the gender pay gap | The Economist - "Why compare female part time wages to male full time? Why not to male part time? It's difficult to shake off the feeling that it is deliberate... If we take the first argument seriously, that the existence of a pay gap is proof of discrimination, then we must ask why almost everyone is so viciously bigoted against workers in the private sector? Of course, the more parsimonious explanation seems to be that there are alternative explanations of the gap... if we’re willing to accept such arguments to explain the public/private gap, we should be at least as prepared to entertain them in the case of women"
One comment: Like it or not, women cost companies more money than men do. In order for the companies to make up for the additional cost, they have to offer a lower salary to a female job candidate. It makes perfect sense from a business standpoint. If women got paid the same money salary that men got paid, they would be earning more than men if you measure in terms of full wages, which includes money and non-money wages.

2010 Quality of Life Index - "Every January, we rank and rate 194 countries to come up with our list of the places that offer you the best quality of life. This isn't about best value, necessarily. It's about the places in the world where the living is, simply put, great... To produce this annual Index we consider nine categories: Cost of Living, Culture and Leisure, Economy, Environment, Freedom, Health, Infrastructure, Safety and Risk, and Climate...
1. France
2. Australia
3. Switzerland
4. Germany
5. New Zealand
6. Luxembourg
7. United States
8. Belgium
9. Canada
10. Italy"
Full ranking - Singapore has a score of 61 (3 points above Malaysia at 58!)
Interesting comment: "Convenience (and the frenetic pace that comes with it) is often overrated". In other words, there is a high human cost to efficiency.

Nym Words > Autoantonyms - "Auto-antonym has Greek roots meaning a word that is the opposite of itself. They have variously been called contranyms, contronyms, antilogies, Janus words (after the two-faced Greek mythical figure, from which "January" also derives), and enantiodromes. Below is a list af many such words"

Hot springs that inspired Hayao Miyazaki's "Spirited Away"

Facebook's privacy changes: When will it go too far (and will you even notice)? - "Much of what you need to know about Facebook’s proposed privacy changes boils down to timing: Friday, 3:04 p.m. PDT. Why is the timing important? That’s when you typically roll out news you don’t want folks to pay a lot of attention to... So what’s Facebook trying to downplay? Try a proposed privacy setting change where Facebook will share user data with external sites automatically"

An Unruly Comment Thread? It's Probably The Trolls - "Trolls, however, are community members without convictions, arguing a point just to see the other person go red. They turn perfectly interesting threads into festering cesspools of resentment... the only thing that will move this conversation forward is to ask the community to ignore them... If we see you feeding a troll, we will remove both the troll's comments and your responses... "I think of [a troll] as someone who doesn't engage others in a discussion, who posts irrelevant comments, or who goes off on the same rant no matter the topic." In some ways, a troll is like the person at the party who's a little too drunk and picks a fight with everyone. He (or she) is the one who makes things so hostile that everyone avoids a gathering as soon as they see him on the guest list"

Do female suicide bombers get 72 virgins too? - "Respected commentator Al-Tirmidhi said in a hadith that every man will have six dozen huris in heaven, but very few commentators enumerated the rewards for women. Ninth-century scholar Al-Tabarani did argue that women will be reunited with their husbands in the next world, and those who had multiple husbands can pick the best one to be their eternal spouse. (Other commentators added that a woman who never married can marry any man she wants in paradise.) From the 9th through the 12th centuries, Muslim scholars described paradise as a place of sensual delights—for men... Women may not get these particular perks, but religious commentaries argue that paradise will make them beautiful, happy, and without jealousy. The fact that they fasted and worshipped Allah during their earthly lives will also make them superior to the virgins, who only exist in heaven. Some modern clerics argue that in heaven, husbands never grow bored of their wives, even with so many huris around"