Links - 17th November 2010

"Television – a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done." - Ernie Kovacs

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Defying Trend, Canada Lures More Migrants - "There is no such thing in Canada as an anti-immigrant politician... “From the moment we touched down at the airport, it was love all the way,” said Olusegun Daodu, 34, a procurement professional who recently arrived from Nigeria to join relatives and marveled at the medical card that offers free care. “If we have any reason to go to the hospital now, we just walk in”... “The big difference between Canada and the U.S is that we don’t border Mexico”"

Infographic of the Day: What the Bible Got Wrong - "The Bible was wrong. For evidence look to, well, the Bible. Such is the conclusion of this stunning, provocative infographic, which maps contradictions in the Bible, from whether thou shalt not commit adultery down to the color of Jesus’s robes"

RFID Transplantation - "One small irritation I’ve encountered with the SMRT is that the “EZlink” RFID card system used in Singapore conflicts with the two other RFID subway cards in my wallet (the Shenzhen Tong and the Hong Kong Octopus card)... Having seen Japan’s Suica system integrated into mobile phones, I thought, why not stick the EZlink chip inside my phone?"

The Shadow Scholar - "I have become a master of the admissions essay.. I can't tell you how many times I've been paid to write about somebody helping a loved one battle cancer. I've written essays that could be adapted into Meryl Streep movies. I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow... it's hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I'd say education is the worst... I've read enough academic material to know that I'm not the only bullshit artist out there. I think about how Dickens got paid per word and how, as a result, Bleak House is ... well, let's be diplomatic and say exhaustive. Dickens is a role model for me"

Zoophilia: a rare cause of traumatic injury to the rectum - "Sexual contacts with animals (zoophilia, bestiality) are rarely reported. The second well-documented case of life-threatening rectal injury resulting from anal intercourse with a boar is reported herein"

The Simplest Pie Chart

Working women tell men they're useless about the house 'because it make them feel more feminine' - "Female breadwinners exaggerate their partner's uselessness around the home because they feel guilty about devoting too much time to their career, and not enough to their role of wife and mother. By nagging their man over his alleged shortcomings, women feel more feminine because they can control the traditionally female role of maintaining the home and family"

Women in the Netherlands work less, have lesser titles and a big gender pay gap, and they love it. - "Studies of female happiness in the U.S. find that even as our options have increased and we have become financially more independent than in any previous time in our history, American women as a whole are not getting any happier. If anything, the studies show that we are emotionally less well-off than we were before. Wasn't the whole point of the fight for equality in the workplace to improve our wellbeing?... Dutch women could be considered extremely progressive when compared with most other women in the world—they have enviable reproductive rights and rates of political participation. But they are often responsible for only a small portion of the family income... The problem for American women isn't just the amount of time we spend working; it is the notion that we need to be perfect at everything we do"

NYU Professor to Implant Camera in Head to Broadcast a Live Stream to Museum in Qatar - "Students long have complained about teachers with eyes on the backs of their heads. A New York University photography professor is going one further by implanting a camera in the back of his head."

International Comparisons of GDP per Capita,GDP per Hour, and Related Measures, 1960–2009 - "While Singapore had one of the highest levels of GDP per capita, it had one of the lowest levels of GDP per hour worked... ... The five countries with the lowest GDP per hour are also the give countries with the highest number of annual average hours worked"

How to boost corporate Japan: Stop speaking Japanese - "Last year's Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) rankings showed Japanese test takers scored second worst in the East Asia region, below North Korea and Myanmar. Only Laos ranked lower than Japan"

Christopher Hitchens: 'You have to choose your future regrets' - "Hitchens once wrote a line that has almost gained the status of philosophical epigram or even scientific dictum: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence"... "I learned that very often the most intolerant and narrow-minded people are the ones who congratulate themselves on their tolerance and open-mindedness. Amazing. My conservative friends look at me and say, 'Welcome to the club. What took you so long?'"... He had previously held positions that were unpopular on the left – preferring the British government to the Argentinian fascist junta during the Falklands conflict, and calling for American intervention to stop the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia – but his support for the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan proved to be a step too far for his anti-imperialist comrades... [some] people think he's a bonkers Islamophobe – though many who do were content enough to leave Muslims to their bloody fate in Bosnia... "Darfur, Zimbabwe, Burma, North Korea, anywhere that the concept of human rights doesn't exist, it's always the Chinese at backstop. And always for reasons that you could write down in three words: blood for oil""

Tianjin Football Club Looks At Boys’ Penises To Find Talent - "This is all about men’s football, I wonder where they look when selecting players for women’s football?"

The World map that tries to offend everyone, even penguins

Singer James Blunt 'stopped World War 3'

Before you pay to volunteer abroad, think of the harm you might do - "Just a quarter of children in these so-called orphanages have actually lost both parents. And these private ventures are proliferating fast: the numbers increased by 65% in just three years. Once again, clumsy attempts to do good end up harming communities we want to help... Wealthy tourists prevent local workers from getting much-needed jobs, especially when they pay to volunteer; hard-pressed institutions waste time looking after them and money upgrading facilities; and abused or abandoned children form emotional attachments to the visitors, who increase their trauma by disappearing back home... dropping in to take photographs of orphaned children, who may have seen parents recently waste to death, reduces them to the status of lions and zebras on the veld... "voluntourism" is more about the self-fulfilment of westerners than the needs of developing nations... Too many travellers carry a naively romantic idea of doing good alongside their luggage. "Unfortunately, they are led by their hearts and not their heads and unknowingly support environments that may be abusive to children"... the work carried out by volunteers was often unnecessary, as admitted by organisers"
These are many of the same reasons I am against YEP

The lifespan and depth of tweets vs blog posts - "Research shows tweets really have a lifespan of just an hour, whereas blog posts may have comments and discussions on them for days, weeks, months or even longer. They’re certainly more searchable than old tweets and old Facebook status updates... another reason to continue to blog rather than tweet: depth... 'At a certain point, the number of posts in each monthly archive dropped off a cliff, particularly where details of my personal life were concerned. The reason, of course, was that I’d started to use Twitter for that kind of personal stuff.'"

Austen novels heavily edited for errors - "Austen's unpublished manuscripts unpick her reputation for perfection in various ways: we see blots, crossings out, messiness - we see creation as it happens, and in Austen's case, we discover a powerful counter-grammatical way of writing. She broke most of the rules for writing good English... This suggests somebody else was heavily involved in the editing process"

AirAsia Price Chart 亚航机票价格图
Prices to AirAsia destinations plotted as a chart (not all destinations available)

Top 25 censored articles released - "Each year, Project Censored compiles a list of the most censored stories, those mainstream media blacks out, those written in the best interest of humanity instead of military and corporations. These articles are published in a book. Human rights abuses and "crimes against democracy" involving finances, military, vaccines, surveillance, secret detention centers, oil companies, ongoing torture at Gitmo and other US war crimes, 911, nanotech particles and biometric cards are among this year's top censored stories include in the book plus extra commentary"
"Censored". You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means.

Muslim Dances on the Central Altar of Florence's Cathedral - "Muslim (from Somalia) jumps up on the alter of the Florence Cathedral and dances. Where is the worldwide outrage? A fringe pastor tweets something stupid, and the world is set afire... What would become of a Christian who had done such a thing at a mosque in Marrakesh?"

Play-Doh Ads - Singapore - "One would definitely assume these ads are not targeted at the children themselves but, rather, at the younger generation of parents that would view these pictures and not create an unnecessary angry protest about it"