Links - 28th December 2010

"Money can't buy you happiness but it does bring you a more pleasant form of misery." - Spike Milligan

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Christina Patterson: How I was smeared as an anti-Semite - "The "Museum of Tolerance" [Jerusalem branch will be] on the site of a Muslim cemetery, which the Muslims haven't regarded as all that tolerant... the "Museum of Tolerance" online poll about bullying. "Have you been bullied?" it asks, and then invites you to tick the box for "race", "religion", "appearance", "sexual orientation" or "other", which pretty much ensures that the proportion of the world's population who can claim to be a victim is around 100 per cent... I [had] criticised... certain practices, in different religious communities, which conflict with some of the values in British society – free speech, sexual equality, gay rights, the rights of children not to be mutilated by their parents... anyone, anywhere, who criticises the behaviour of anyone who happens to be Jewish should be stuck in the stocks and slapped with a label... so that when anyone puts their name in Google, what pops up is words like "anti-Semitic", "prick" and "bigot". They seem pretty damn serious that their support for "Jewish Rights in the World" translates into direct support of Israel, too... [Hannah Arendt] was told by her fellow German-Jewish philosopher, Gershom Scholem, that he could find "little trace" of "love of the Jewish people" in her work, she said this. "You are quite right," she told him in a letter. "I am not moved by any 'love' of the sort, and for two reasons: I have never in my life 'loved' any people or collective... The only kind of love I know of and believe in is the love of persons." The same, she didn't add, but might have, goes for hate, too"

Were WikiLeaks-linked cyber attacks over hyped? - ""Hacktivists" like Anonymous are low level risks because of their small numbers, lack of focus and a technical inability to bring down systems for a sustained period of time. The report argues that the bigger risk comes from criminals and states that can cause much more damage because they control millions of virus infected computers"

Too much Christmas in Indonesia - "Indonesia's top Islamic body said Thursday that Christmas decorations in malls, amusement centres and public places were "excessive and provocative" in the Muslim-majority country... "It should be done in a proportional manner as Muslims are the majority here, otherwise it will hurt their feelings... We received complaints from a number of malls' employees who are forced to wear Santa Claus costumes which are against their faith""
Dhimmi! And it's time to construct a temple to Santa Claus...

Women 'exhausted' by fight for equality, claims feminist icon - "'There's been a subterranean war between men and women which has been won by women and they don't actually understand what they've lost.' The campaigner added: 'I don't think anybody foresaw that what a freedom of choice would do is imprison many. 'Many women, they don't have a choice now, they have to work, they have to work hard, and I just see an exhausted generation of women trying to do it all'... Pizzey, who has never described herself as a feminist, fell out with many in the women's movement because she did not share many of their views. The middle-class Christian said many feminists were obsessed with destroying men and marriage and said for many it was like a 'born again' religion. She has previously claimed women need to stop competing with each other with things like dieting and cosmetic surgery."

Sorry, Kids. Fire Stations Are Ditching Fire Poles - "Seattle... settled a lawsuit for $13 million in 2009 after a firefighter fell down the open area around the pole and sustained brain injuries... "the pole has been one of the biggest sources of firefighter injury"... "In my experience, the younger you are, the more likely you are to slide a pole""

What Explains the Lesbian Wage Premium? - "Lesbian women are better-educated on average, are more likely to be white, live predominantly in cities, have fewer children, and are significantly more likely to be a professional. But even when you control for these differences, the wage premium is still on the order of 6%... a possible explanation has to do with the division of labor in a heterosexual union... if a woman believes that she will eventually be married to a man who earns a higher income than she does, then she has less to gain from investing in human capital that will give her an advantage on the labor market... the premium does not disappear completely for [once-married lesbian] women but is reduced by about 17%"
This is something that you won't hear LGBT activists talking about (or mentioned in LGBT Privilege); a complementary explanation to why women who expect to get married don't work as hard - they know their husbands will take care of them so they can afford to relax (I want a husband too!)
Meanwhile, "gay men earned less than their married heterosexual counterparts but more than their cohabitating heterosexual counterparts", so there's a monetary advantage to being gay too. Unfortunately we can't test the theory that men work hard to get women - because male sexuality is less fluid and even gay men who get married already know they are gay

Maybe Scrooge Couldn't Help Being Hard-Hearted - "Affluent people, despite their generally higher level of education, are less able to read the emotions of others, a new study suggests."

Traces of the French in Hanoi by Stanley Meisler - "French colonialism... was always regarded as deep-rooted, passionate and enduring. The French believed they had been anointed to bring civilization to the benighted peoples of Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean... The French teachers do not care if their students cannot add or subtract so long as they cannot add or subtract in good French"... I never expected to see a once French colonial city like Hanoi so bereft of French influence."

The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice (Review) - "The philosophy that guided the Missionary Sisters both considered suffering a virtue and strongly discouraged attachments of any kind to the people served. The inevitable result of this combination was an indifference to human suffering... "In Haiti, to keep the spirit of poverty, the sisters reused needles until they became blunt. Seeing the pain caused by the blunt needles, some of the volunteers offered to procure more needles, but the sisters refused"... needles were reused continually and not sterilized but only rinsed at the cold water tap - another false show of poverty at the expense of the residents' well being... How can one possibly excuse the willful denial of pain medication to people who are terminally ill, regardless of the theology behind it? How does one call somebody who does this a saint?... If Mother Teresa was so good at raising funds and did in fact raise millions, why is there no money for clean needles in hospices? Where does the money go?... "Most of the money remains in the Vatican Bank""
Book blurb: "Mother Teresa is first and foremost interested not in providing medical treatment, but in furthering Catholic doctrine and–quite literally–becoming a saint"

Indonesian maid jailed for putting urine in Hong Kong baby's milk - "The maid... added her own urine to the formula milk because of a traditional rural Indonesian belief that it makes a baby more obedient and closer to the carer... A support group for Indonesian helpers told the Hong Kong Standard newspaper it was aware of the rural belief concerning urine and would issue a circular telling maids not to do it in Hong Kong"
Ethnocentrism!

Black Murders Eight Whites; Media Blame Whites - "Just before he started shooting, Thornton had been told he had the choice of quitting or being fired for stealing beer, and there was video proof of his doing so. But this fact — the one indisputable and most pertinent pre-murder fact — got lost within the larger context of Thornton’s claims of being a victim of whites. Those preoccupied with Thornton’s charges of workplace racism might wish to reflect on this: Racists and otherwise bigoted murderers always blame their victims. Medieval Christians who murdered Jews blamed the Jews for poisoning wells, using Christian children’s blood in making their matzo, or some other terrible crime. Whites who lynched blacks blamed those blacks for rape or some other terrible crime... the liberal media — i.e., almost all news outlets in America — are not branding these Connecticut murders for what they are: racist. Thornton actually told the 911 operator, “I wish I could have gotten more of the people [i.e., whites]”"

NOW Hags Target Hooters, Claiming The Restaurant Sells Sex To Kids - "Usually, an establishment needs to actually sell sex-related goods in order to be considered a sex establishment. For the National Organization for Women, that’s just far too narrow a description of a sex store. To them, all that’s needed for an establishment to be accused of selling sex is attractive female employees — and so, of course, they’re targeting Hooters. Apparently, by hiring attractive women to work in the restaurant wearing skimpy clothes, Hooters is not only selling sex, but they’re selling sex to children... So, of course, NOW will be campaigning to keep children away from beaches and swimming pools next, right? After all, women wear far less to the beach than any Hooters girl wears"
There're interesting parallels here with how the right likes to talk about protecting the children; in another article she points out that Hooters girls wear more than girls who go to clubs - even while a feminist calls it "more offensive than a lapdancing club"