Links - 6th April 2011

"I was coming home from kindergarten--well they told me it was kindergarten. I found out later I had been working in a factory for ten years. It's good for a kid to know how to make gloves." - Ellen DeGeneres

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EAT DA POO POO - Uganda's homophobia - "The other person is poo-pooing... Tell me, when you have a law against homosexuality, do you say 'except eating poo poo'?"

Are Singaporean men too shy? - "SINGAPOREAN men are too shy and do not dare make the first move, especially when it comes to dating. That's the main gripe of female foreign professionals who have been working in Singapore. Many observed that Singaporean men need to polish their skills when it comes to asking a girl out for a date"
This is quite a cock conclusion from the video, Part 2 of which does expand on the issue. However the topic is only properly dealt with in:

Swinging singles in Singapore, not - "As she and the four other expatriate bachelorettes LifeStyle spoke to attest, single women like them get a rotten deal in love just for being the driven achievers they are... She's not attracted to local bachelors - 'it's a physique thing', as she puts it... An Australian expatriate bachelorette, who asks not to be named, notes: 'It can be quite funny sometimes when you're in a pub with a group of single expat women. 'If a guy so much as glances their way, they grab my hand and go, 'That guy wants to know me, let's get his namecard now''... most [expat men] are here on contracts for a couple of years, and feel they might as well try something different and enjoy themselves while they can... That 'new start' often means no-obligation flings with Sarong Party Girls - lithe, limber, long-haired lasses who prowl for expat squeezes"

Spanish stereotypes: siesta-taking knock-off-early types? - "Spaniards keep their nose to the grindstone every day far longer than, say, the Dutch or Germans... Office culture keeps many chained to their desk because it is frowned upon to leave before the boss. Productivity is poor, with 41% missing their daily objectives, but improves when companies relax old-fashioned, rigid, working hours"

delanceyplace.com 3/30/11 - getting the gist of it - "'Total number of each animal that Moses took on the ark with him during the great flood.' Jennings lost the buzz to Matt Kleinmaier, a medical student from Chicago, who answered, 'What is two?' It was wrong. Jennings, aware that it was supposed to be tricky, noticed that it asked for 'each animal' instead of 'each species.' He buzzed for a second chance at the clue and answered, 'What is one?' That was wrong, too. The correct answer, which no one came up with, was 'What is zero?' Jennings and Kleinmaier had fallen for a trick. Each had focused on the gist of the clue - the number of animals boarding the biblical ark - while ignoring one detail: The ark builder was Noah, not Moses. This clue actually came from a decades-old psychological experiment, one that has given a name - the Moses Illusion - to the careless thinking that most humans employ... A question about Ezekiel herding animals into the ark might not pass so smoothly... when researchers substituted a former U.S. president for Moses, people noticed right away. Nixon had nothing to do with the ark, they said"

Engineering vs. Liberal Arts: Who’s Right—Bill or Steve? - "'Gaining a degree made a big difference in the sales and employment of the company that a founder started. But the field that the degree was in and the school that it was obtained from were not a significant factor'... But I need to acknowledge the difficult reality: that employment prospects are dim for liberal-arts majors. Graduates from top engineering schools such as Duke are always in high demand. But PhDs in English from even the most prestigious universities, such as UC-Berkeley, can’t get jobs. The data I presented above were on the background of tech-company founders—those who made the transition into entrepreneurship. Most don’t. And, as you can note from Bill Gates’ speech, there is a bias against liberal arts and humanities"

In aftermath of bombing, interfaith dialogue is suspended in Israel - "Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Mezger called on the Muslim religious leadership to condemn the attack and the rocket attacks on Gaza from southern Israel... “So long as the inciting religious leaders won’t condemn the terrorists, the Chief Rabbinate will suspend its interfaith dialogue with them”... Metzger has condemned attacks committed by Jews against Palestinian targets, and has visited the sites where some of those attacks took place"

World map of The Penis Size Worldwide (country) by Country - TargetMap
Someone sent me this very problematic link. With respect to one dataset, I don't have the linguistic skills or journal access to check out the references, but the chart is lying. You will find, just to take one example, that Japan has been misrepresented (according to the data, men in Japan are supposed to be bigger than US men). Meanwhile the other dataset says that "This website provide statistical information offered by trusted research centers and reports worldwide". This is not reassuring in the least.

The tactic of assassinating terrorist group leaders - "Depending on the size of the terrorist group, killing the leader may not end their activities and can even make them more radical and violent. Many of the drone strikes that have caused such anger in Pakistan and Afghanistan and other places are deployed based on the decapitation approach to counterterrorism"

Jack Churchill - Wikipedia - "Churchill gave the signal to attack by cutting down the enemy Feldwebel (sergeant) with his barbed arrows, becoming the only known British soldier to have felled an enemy with a longbow in the course of the war... In July 1943, as commanding officer, he led 2 Commando from their landing site at Catania in Sicily with his trademark claymore slung around his waist and a longbow and arrows around his neck and his bagpipes under his arm"

Is any roast chicken worth £32? JOHN TORODE puts the new superbird (and its rivals) to the test - "5. HALAL CHICKEN, LIDL
John: Oh dear. This poor bird is all skin and bone with not enough meat. It has a stale taste, like a muddy pond. 0/5
Anne: Eugh, this is not at all pleasant. It tastes of dirty dishwater. Pretty repulsive. 0/5
6. KOSHER CHICKEN
John: This has thin skin and hard meat on the legs, which I don’t like at all. It doesn’t seem to have been a very happy chicken — the legs are broken. It is also too fatty. The breast is tasty, though. 1/5
Anne: This doesn’t look remotely appealing, but it actually has a good flavour. I am not sure about the texture, though. The dark meat feels wibbly in my mouth. 2/5"

Henri the black Labrador from France ignores English orders

YouTube - Banned Life Insurance Commercial

Neuville-en-Ferrain replaces patriotic female statue - because subject's breasts are too BIG - "The artist who made the rejected bust, Catherine Lamacque, said she gave it outsized breasts deliberately, 'to symbolise the generosity of the Republic'"
The caption is wrong, as a French version makes clear

The Longevity Project: Decades of Data Reveal Paths to Long Life - "Many adages promising long life—get married, exercise regularly, think happy thoughts, don't work so hard—are not shortcuts to immortality, and for certain groups of people, they can actually have the opposite effect. For instance, optimistic people have a tendency to ignore details, meaning they don't follow doctor's orders correctly or lead themselves into unhealthy situations or addictions. It was the conscientious people—careful, sometimes even neurotic, but not catastrophizing—who lived longer... some of what we think will benefit our children may actually rob them of years later in life. In the Terman study, precocious, active children who were sent to school a year early, as Philip was, tended to have emotional problems that led to unhealthy behaviors and shortened life span... "Take it easy; don't work so hard, and you will stay healthier." This is rotten advice—the stress that comes from an ambitious career can be beneficial to health. "Worrying is very bad for your health." This is not all true. We found lots of instances where worrying was healthy, especially for men... a traumatic event such as parental divorce could actually contribute to a longer life, if the child learned to be resilient"

The hard truth: People in Asia dislike sex - "Our region always comes last in the Durex global survey of sexual well-being. Last month, the Mainichi Daily News reported that more than a third of Japanese boys aged 16 to 19 and 59 percent of girls of the same age were “indifferent or averse” to having sex, according to a survey. David McNeill, a journalist working in Japan, was amazed, responding: “Where I grew up in Ireland, teenagers thought about little else.”"

When Animals Attack - Cow Survival Guide - "While the world worries about being eaten alive by sharks, statistics show that far more Americans are killed each year by a more menacing animal: the cow. Don't let yourself become a statistic: We talk to experts on livestock and farm-related fatalities, who explain what to do to avoid the unpleasant company of a grumpy mooing beast... If you have a cow or bull that you know to be prone to violent outbursts, Sanderson says, get rid of it. Have a nice steak dinner. Invite your friends"

Muslim Brotherhood advocates Egyptian modesty police - "On the street level, at least 20 attacks were perpetrated against the tombs of Muslim mystics (suffis), who are the subject of popular veneration but disparaged by Islamic fundamentalists, or salafis... "This is incredibly worrying to many Egyptians," Maye Kassem, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo (AUC), told The Media Line. "The salafis were always undercover in Egypt and now they are emerging as a political force. They are getting too vocal"... "There are areas in Egypt where Christian girls can't walk outside after eight o'clock in the evening for fear of being kidnapped""

The Matchmaker - "Economists have to make themselves useful by fixing broken systems in which people aren’t getting what they want. “We’re starting to know enough about how some of these things work,” Roth said, “that in some cases, when you’ve got a market in trouble, and you think, ‘Who’re you gonna call?’ you could call an economist”... Roth met two people at the University of Illinois who had a profound influence on his work. Both of them were psychologists; one he wrote lots of papers with early in his career, and the other he married... “The theorist just wouldn’t believe it,” Cooper said. “Al had this attitude that if the theory and the real world were in conflict, that meant there was a problem with the theory, not with the real world”... People tend to be a little territorial about their problems, Roth said, and they don’t always understand why someone who works at a business school is sticking his nose in"

Youths' intention to emigrate 'not linked to threat from foreign talent' - "Just over half, or 53.2 per cent, of the youths interviewed had a low intention to emigrate... About 43.3 per cent strongly agree or agree that increase in emigration is inevitable as the environment in Singapore becomes more competitive and stressful. Noting that 26.4 per cent of respondents expressed a desire to emigrate within the next five years, Dr Lim felt youths' current decision to stay - despite the foreign talent threat - could be "a pragmatic decision of enduring short-term pain for future gain""
Unsurprisingly, women want to stay and men want to leave. A look at the study is also instructive: 26.4% will actively examine the possibility of emigrating, 29.5% know many who want to do so and only 57.2% would rather be Singaporean than anything else