Links - 30th July 2010

"In all large corporations, there is a pervasive fear that someone, somewhere is having fun with a computer on company time. Networks help alleviate that fear." - John C. Dvorak

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Bad translation makes fundamentalists of us all - ""Praise be to God" (Alhamdulilah)... can mean "I am fine", "Cool, the electricity is back" or "Ah, you finally managed to pronounce this word", and so many other things... In Lebanon, they even use "May God dress you" when seeing a hot girl wearing a skirt or a top, meaning I guess, "Please God, quickly cover this great body before I jump on it." The same goes with insults: May God destroy your house, May God burn your religion, May God infect you with disease…But think about it. In English, we say "God damn it", "God bless you", "Jesus Christ""
Keywords: arabic, inshallah, non-religious, part of the language, god willing

Archimedes' Principle of Buoyancy - How do Ships Float? (Bible History Online) - "Why is this important in the study of Biblical history? Good question! As the study of physics and various sciences were being developed in ancient Greece it, among other things, opened a door for the Lord to bring new learning and new technology into the world that would eventually help to prepare the world at just the right time for the coming of the Savior and His gospel. We have to keep in mind that men were living in darkness and the darkness was increasing in its intensity and the only hope for mankind was the message that Jesus Christ and His followers would bring"
???

Females and Harry Potter: Not All That Empowering - "This book explores the sexism inherent in the Harry Potter series, books in which a hero and his male friends are the focus and center of activity and the female characters are passive enablers--at best. Using critical discourse analysis and focusing on five themes (rule following/breaking, intelligence, validating/enabling, mothering, and resistance), the author explores the construction of traditional gender roles throughout the books. She concludes with a discussion of the implications for development of school curricula that enable students to critically deconstruct these texts. "
...

Palestinian jailed for rape after claiming to be Jewish - "A conviction for rape by deception on the grounds of racial misrepresentation is believed to be internationally unprecedented... In 2007, a Syrian pilot walked free from a court in Swansea after being accused of tricking a woman into intercourse by saying it could cure her of a sexually transmitted disease. A court in Massachusetts also acquitted a man who allegedly masqueraded as his twin-brother in order to have sex with the man's wife"
"Politically, I call it rape whenever a woman has sex and feels violated"

Black parents give birth to white baby

Who writes the script? In the end, a purely academic question - "If Mr Cheng had spoken, would the students have simply lapped it all up? Well.they do not seem to necessarily lap up what their textbooks on Singapore history tell them (or is that in fact the problem?)... In the end, the students lost an opportunity to hear a former political detainee speak, which perhaps the academically high achieving JC students among them would have found handy when they appeared before the Public Services Commission for their scholarship interviews. The ‘NLB experience’ would have been a perfect subject to show off their critical thinking skills, ‘thinking out of the box‘, ‘passion’, or whatever the current buzzwords are."

What you don't know about Isaac Newton - "We know now that Newton, the alchemist, hid behind a pseudonym, Jeova sanctus unus, as he slowly and unwittingly poisoned himself with the mercury he continually touched, smelled, and tasted... "Newton was not the first of the age of reason," Keynes said. "He was the last of the magicians"

What is America coming to???? - "I asked her, “Are you serving any meals during our flight?” She looked at me kinda funny and said, “I can’t answer that for security reasons”... Finally a United representative approached me with my bags and said “We are taking you off this flight for security reasons.” “Why” I asked. “You apparently asked the flight attendant if the Police were onboard”"

5 More Mistakes You’re (Still) Making On Twitter - "You Tick The ‘Send Updates To Twitter’ Box On Every Single Social Network, Game And App On The Planet Please… don’t. Only people on Foursquare care about updates from people on Foursquare, and even then it’s a bit one-way. Sending those updates to Twitter verges somewhere between mad and pointless. So you’re at Starbucks. Again. For the third time today. Given that we live 5,000 miles apart, can you remind me why I should care? Or why anybody should? And don’t get me started on things like Mafia Wars. Reality check: if anything on your Twitter profile is auto-posting for you, you’re doing it wrong."

NCBI ROFL: Writing emails as part of sleepwalking after increase in Zolpidem [Ambien].

Stone Age Carving: Ancient Dildo?

Penile Extenders Actually Might Work, Doctors Say - "The penile extender, a traction device for the dedicated — to be used at least six hours a day for at least six months — is not only safe and effective, doctors say, but also can increase erection size and improve erectile function. The results appear in the March issue of the journal BJU International. (For my own sanity, I confirmed that BJU stands for British Journal of Urology, which isn't mentioned at all within the journal.)... "The magnitude of gained length was similar irrespective of baseline size""

Spiritual Women Have More Sex - "For women, however, spirituality was the strongest predictor for the number of sexual partners, the frequency of sex, and the tendency to have sex without a condom. “It is possible female young adults yearn for greater connectedness with other humans,” Burris writes. “Spirituality, at least for women, could be considered a risk factor.”"

snopes.com: A Tale of Two Houses - "Al Gore's Nashville mansion is something of the energy-gobbler the e-mail depicts, while President Bush's Crawford ranch is more the model of responsible resource use the juxtaposition portrays it t be"

Muslims told not to wear 'devilish' Manchester United jersey - "The Johor Religious Council adviser and the Mufti of Perak both state that images of crosses, liquor brands and devils on football shirts are forbidden by Islam and should not be worn by Muslims. Other football shirts deemed unacceptable by the religious leaders include those of Brazil, Portugal, Serbia, Barcelona and Norway because their crests all carry images of a cross. "There is no excuse for wearing such garments because it means, as a Muslim, you are idolising the symbol of another religion," Datuk Nooh Gadot, the Mufti of Johor, said."
Malaysia Boleh!

Writers Explain What It's Like Toiling on the Content Farm - "The articles she wrote -- all of which were selected from an algorithmically generated list -- included How to Wear a Sweater Vest" and How to Massage a Dog That Is Emotionally Stressed," even though she would never willingly don a sweater vest and has never owned a dog. "I was completely aware that I was writing crap," she said. "I was like, 'I hope to God people don't read my advice on how to make gin at home because they'll probably poison themselves.' "Never trust anything you read on eHow.com," she said, referring to one of Demand Media's high-traffic websites, on which most of her clips appeared."

Home from Home - "How do we become who we are? How does family background alter one's sense of self?... London based, DJ Bobby Friction travels to Canada to find out what his life might have been like if his family had moved from India to Canada and not the UK. After spending a day with his trucker cousin, he questions his own identity. Is it easier being Asian in Canada or in Europe?"

Photo Gallery: How to Take Camera Phone Pictures

SHADRAKE: I’d do it all again - "Everything I have written is true. There is a wave of change coming in this country. It’s time for Lee Kwan Yew to stop running Singapore like his own private fiefdom"

Kuriositas: The Hidden Posters of Notting Hill Gate - "In around 1959 Notting Hill Tube Station underwent modernisation. The old lifts were abandoned and new escalators were installed. The passageways to the lift were sealed off. Recent work at the station has rediscovered these passageways and when they were opened they revealed a marvellous time capsule"

The Truth About "Islamic Science" - "Whatever was achieved in science during this time period was rarely done by Arab Muslims. "Islamic science" was almost totally dependent upon translations, frequently made by non-Muslims, of the achievements of pre-Islamic cultures, Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, etc. Moreover, a striking number of Muslim thinkers were Persians, who owed more to their pre-Islamic heritage than they did to Islam... Professor Stanley Jaki observes that the improvements brought by Muslim scientists to the Greek scientific corpus were "never substantial"... The Romans were good at certain types of engineering and technology, but like the Chinese they were surprisingly poor at providing a coherent scientific view of the world... the study of the natural sciences and philosophy was shunned in the Islamic colleges of the Middle East and that all such inquiries were undertaken in carefully guarded private settings... "rational sciences were – in medieval Islam – considered to be 'foreign sciences' and at times heretical"... Science was viewed as Islamic science, the study of the Koran, the hadith, Arab history etc... "though astronomy was implicitly acknowledged to be a 'handmaiden of religion,' it was associated with astrology, and the latter's claim to predict the future ran directly counter to the teachings of Islam"... The Chinese had an established tradition of viewing non-Chinese as barbarians: "For this reason, the Chinese were exceedingly cautious and selective in their borrowings from other cultures""
Another article by the author on Science and Islam
keywords: Golden Age

'Darth Vader' robs bank: Armed man demands cash in New York raid

Younger men in Singapore seek foreign brides - ""Some feel that they pak tor (Cantonese for 'date') a few years, then the Singaporean girls will dump them. "They think it's a waste of time. So they pay and they can choose a pretty wife." Beyond the pragmatism displayed, agencies also said there is now less stigma attached to men seeking a foreign bride... In general, agency owners said Singaporean men are looking for simple women with lower expectations who are willing to stay at home and look after the family... Experts say it is not surprising, given that Singapore is, to a large extent, still a patriarchal society where men prefer to marry someone with a lower socio-economic status... "Men with lower educational qualifications, or on the lower rungs of the social ladder, may not have the option of marrying upwards socially"... Women, he said, can be quite demanding. "Every date, must also pay a lot of money""
I love these feminarchal anecdotal stories which ignore data, and which blame the men for everything (at least Tan Ern Ser alluded to a more complex issue)

The Agnostic Cartographer - "How Google’s open-ended maps are embroiling the company in some of the world’s touchiest geopolitical disputes"