Links - 29th May 2010

"Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love." - Charles M. Schulz

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Are Cocaine Users Killing the Rainforest? - "The argument that cocaine users are destroying the environment is rapidly leading its proponents into a spiraling abyss of irony and incoherence... "Cocaine use requires a disposable income and during the week many users drive hybrid cars and recycle. Then, on the weekend, he or she destroys everything they believe in" Wait, what!? Did he just say that cocaine users are successful and well-educated?... I remember the good old days when cocaine was supposed to make you steal things and kill people... The two options are 1) illicit cocaine cultivation in the rainforest, or 2) regulated cultivation somewhere else. There is no third option in which everyone agrees not to do coke. If you wait for that to happen while the rainforests burn, you’re a bigger part of the problem than the party people who drive Priuses."
One comment: "not to mention aereal eradication efforts do a heck of a lot of harm to the environment as well"
Compare "for every line of cocaine snorted in Britain four square yards of rainforest is being destroyed" with "For each hamburger that originated from animals raised on rainforest land, approximately 55 square feet of forest have been destroyed". 4 square yards = 3.3 square metres. 55 square feet = 5.1 square metres

Pakistan shuts down Facebook over 'Draw Mohammed Day' - ""This is a hot-topic debate, but so is abortion, illegal immigrants, gay marriage and politics. If we allow even a small compromise for one group, then the free speech on topics like abortion, illegal immigrants and politics can also be censored based on accusations that they cause violence or hate... Hate speech is wanting a group eradicated, physically harmed or dead. I dont think drawing Mohammed falls under that category," she said. "Islam is not above criticism or cartoons""

Cowabunga! Teenage student ninjas foil Aussie mugging - "We just ran outside and started running at them, yelling and everything. These guys have turned around and seen five ninjas in black ninja uniforms running towards them. They just bolted."

ReclaimPrivacy.org | Facebook Privacy Scanner - "This website provides an independent and open tool for scanning your Facebook privacy settings"

It’s Over – Our side of the story « Streetwars Singapore 2010 - "What did life lack in Singpore? A little excitement and color? Well that was what we thought when we decided to bring this game to our sunny shores... We had mistakenly assumed that if this was a private event taking place in the whole of Singapore with no mass gatherings where only 2 persons are playing at anyone time, that no permit would be required. We’ve all had orientation and other corporate games in and around singapore organized casually and those went without any issues so what’s the difference here, we thought? We were wrong. After all that’s said and done, the police don’t have an easy job and we respect their decision to shut down the game. Our intentions were to bring this great game to Singapore, never to cause problems for anyone"
Remember kids: Low Crime doesn't mean No Crime! And that Singapore is a Renaissance City!

Are Singapore teachers overworked? « - "A teacher in a local primary school, Ms Quek’s husband wakes up at 5am every weekday, and leaves home by 6am, to reach school in time for morning ‘guard duty’ at 7am. After remedial lessons, co-curricular activities and administrative duties, her husband reaches home at 8pm for dinner, before, surprise, surprise, he starts to work from home... Names have been changed to protect the teachers’ identity"
This is like a crime story where victims' names are changed

Clever Sillies - Why the high IQ lack common sense - "In the human and social sciences there is therefore a professional incentive to be perversely wrong – to be silly, in other words. And this is indeed what we see. The more that the subject matter of an academic field requires, or depends on, common sense; the sillier it will be... anyone smart and sane who disbelieves the silly clever falsehoods and asserts something different is not just denounced as dumb but actually pilloried as evil. I infer that the motivation behind the moralizing venom of political correctness is the fact that spontaneous human instincts are universal and more powerfully-felt than the absurd abstractions of PC; plus the fact that common sense is basically correct while PC is perversely wrong. Hence, at all costs a fair debate must be prevented if the PC consensus is to be protected. Common sense requires to be stigmatized in order that it is neutralized. Ultimately these manoeuvres serve to defend the power, status and distinctiveness of the intellectual elite"

Replacing education with psychometrics - "If psychometric measures of IQ and personality were available, then it would be easy to construct a modern educational system that was both more efficient and more effective than the current one... this impact on educational professionals is likely to be a key underlying reason why IQ has become a taboo subject, and why the basic facts of IQ have been so effectively obfuscated. Miller notes that it is the ultra-elite, most-selective and heavily research-oriented universities which are the focus of IQ resistance. At the same time more functionally-orientated institutions, such as the United States military, have for many decades quietly been using IQ as a tool to assist with selection and training allocations"

John Cleese plans 'alimony tour' to pay his ex-wife - "I mean people are surprised when I say the figures. When Alyce Faye and I split up she got $13m [£9m] and I got to keep $8m. But over the next seven years I have to pay her $1m a year. She needs it"
She gets to keep 1.5 times what he gets; "A Man Is Not a Financial Plan" "No, but a Divorce is"

I.Z. Reloaded: Online Refreshments: Miss Singapore Universe 2010 contestants revealed, look so fugly! - "Seriously, we should ban Miss Singapore Universe pageant. Just take a look at the finalists vying for this year's crown. God please help us!"

EULA Research Center - "The EULA Research Center is built by the kind submissions from users like you. Submissions are used to enhance and improve EULAlyzer's detection of potentially "interesting" words and phrases, to better the experience for all of our users."

Muhammad cartoon sparks threats to South African newspaper - "The image, in the Mail & Guardian, shows Muhammad lying on a couch complaining to a psychiatrist: "Other prophets have followers with a sense of humour!..."... Zapiro, whose real name is Jonathan Shapiro, received a threatening call this morning from someone calling himself "Muhammad". Zapiro replied: "Which Muhammad is that?" and the caller became abusive... Asked about the offence caused to Muslims by depictions of Muhammad, he said: "They should get over it." "When I was thinking how to draw Muhammad, I downloaded images from Iran because Shi'ite Muslims do not have the injuction not to draw Muhammad. There are lots of great images from medieval times. They informed the way I drew Muhammad in this context... If we can't express opinions in a democratic society, we really are in trouble""
FAIL!

Games, Storytelling, and Breaking the String - "To get a good story out of a game, you have to constrain gameplay in a way that ensures that a story is told through play. There are direct conflicts between the demands of story and the demands of gameplay, because constraints that benefit the story aspect of the game may sometimes make the game aspect less interesting; yet any game is a system of constraints. Players have free action only within those constraints; there are always limitations on behavior, and indeed, gameplay often emerges precisely because of those limitations."

The Ten Most Disturbing Scientific Discoveries - "1. The Earth is not the center of the universe.
2. The microbes are gaining on us.
3. There have been mass extinctions in the past, and we’re probably in one now.
4. Things that taste good are bad for you.
5. E=mc²
6. Your mind is not your own.
7. We’re all apes.
8. Cultures throughout history and around the world have engaged in ritual human sacrifice.
9. We’ve already changed the climate for the rest of this century.
10. The universe is made of stuff we can barely begin to imagine."

Your Sunscreen May Give You Cancer: Study

Never been kissed (ST 22 May) - "Ms Loh, an accountant, has been waiting for her Mr Darcy since age 15: ‘I hope for love at first sight, and I hope my Mr Right will just appear in front of me’... Ms Loh hopes to experience a Hollywood-style romance that will touch her to the depths of her soul. She dreams that once she starts talking to ‘The One’, they will find a soulmate in each other and have endless conversations. Many single women like Ms Loh do nothing about their situation – although some do seek ‘divine help’ to unearth Mr Right.Tarot card reader Kelvin Wong, 28, says the bulk of his clients are women aged between 29 and 40... ‘You have mushroom hair’ and ‘You have carrot legs’ are just some examples of what Mr Chen says to girls"
No wonder "Ms Loh" had her name changed.
TC: "what a horrible article hahaa. its clearly saying men are losers and women are dreaming"