Links - 22nd June 2011

"A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." - Joseph Stalin

***

The precautionary principle does not take into account the deaths caused by NOT adopting a new technology - "A technology that might have prevented contaminated produce from infecting thousands of Germans with E. coli was vetoed—by Germany—11 years ago for use in the European Union... The German veto was a perfect example of what is wrong with the "precautionary principle"—the idea, long advocated by environmentalists, that the burden of proof is on innovators to demonstrate that a new technology is safe before it is approved.... The technology is effectively judged guilty until proven innocent. The precautionary principle often holds new technologies to a higher standard than existing technologies... the most common means of food irradiation is to use an electron gun of the kind found, until the arrival of flat screens, in every ordinary TV set"

Insomnia: Can't sleep? Try cooling your brain - "The method is effective because it slows metabolism in the frontal cortex"

Ghetto Women - "Many feminist interest groups have taken on this concept of ‘intersectionality’ but interpreted it in a simplistic way. They acknowledge how ‘feminism’ cannot represent all women as a homogenous group. They identify themselves as a minority who is ‘othered’ by the dominant feminist ideology, and is seen as ‘troublesome’. But their reaction is to retreat into their own ‘ghetto’, where they feel safe and are not ‘troubled’ by anyone else’s differing identities and opinions. So the radical feminists, trans women, ‘womanists’ , liberal feminists, anti-sex industry feminists, pro-porn feminists, trade union feminists all inhabit different discursive and physical spaces. In some cases they are patrolled by guards and have high fences round them, to keep out intruders... feminism is operating in ghettos, and how anyone who tries to break down the barriers and climb over the fence, gets her hand bitten... the language of hate could become the actions of hate... in this ghetto politics, men and their various ‘intersectional’ identities are not given any credence as far as I can see"

Camille Paglia on "Slutwalk" - "Its confused message is a symptom of the sexual chaos and anomie of the Western bourgeoisie. Don’t call yourself a slut unless you are prepared to live and defend yourself like one... Our liberation has burdened our successors with too many sexual choices too early. Their flesh-baring daily dress is a sex mime to whose arousing signals they seem blind. Only in a police state, and not even there, will women be totally safe on the streets. Honorable men do not rape. But protests and parades cannot create honor. Slutwalk’s overflowing emotion is a cry of distress, less about sexual violence than the spiritual disconnection of men and women in this garish, tech-driven, careerist age. When it devalued motherhood, Western feminism undermined women’s most ancient claim to dignity. Sluttishness as fact or metaphor cannot restore that lost mythic power"

Pedestrian fined for causing hurt to cyclist - "A PEDESTRIAN stepped onto the road without looking to the right and collided with a cyclist who died five hours later... [She] was fined $1,500 after she admitted to causing hurt to cleaner Lock Wai Chee, 42, by doing a negligent act as to endanger his life."
Maybe we need licenses for pedestrians now

Un Français sur trois flirte (ou plus) au bureau - "Un Français sur deux considère l'environnement professionnel comme propice au flirt et à la rencontre amoureuse et un sur trois a eu une relation (amoureuse, sentimentale ou sexuelle) avec une personne rencontrée dans le cadre de son travail (collègue, client, prestataire, fournisseur...)"

Obedient Wives Club to set up a Singapore chapter - "Singapore has supporters who agree with the club's stance of promoting harmonious marriages by advocating wives should act like a first-class prostitute in bed... "The key to make a man gentle and loving is a first-class loving wife an obedient wife. When the wife is obedient, the husband will be happy and gentle. They will not look elsewhere for the loving they need""

Bukit Brown: Progress comes first - "Cemeteries have to give way if our housing needs are to be met... we can still reminisce by looking at old photographs. In land-scarce Singapore, social progress must prevail over conserving burial grounds. Life goes on. When one window to history is closed, we open a new one for future generations."

Why Senator Joe McCarthy Hated 'It's a Wonderful Life' - "According to the FBI’s memo, portraying a capitalist in such a negative light was a classic communist trick... Meanwhile, opinions about Henry Potter’s character have changed over the years. In light of the housing-market crisis, the fiscally responsible banker may not have been such a bad guy after all. The loans that he tried to prevent George Bailey from handing out were essentially subprime mortgages. Mr. Potter may have just been trying to stop the poor citizens of Bedford Falls from over-leveraging themselves. Who’s the evil capitalist now?"
I'm sure some people slam both subprime mortgages and Henry Potter, because their conclusion is pre-ordained

Women Are More Attracted to Men Wearing Red - "Women view men in red as higher in status, more likely to make money and more likely to climb the social ladder. And it’s this high-status judgment that leads to the attraction"

2 Percent of Americans Identify as Gay

Rationally Speaking: The logic of skepticism - "Human beings are thus bound to navigate the treacherous waters between Scylla and Charybdis, between being too skeptical and too gullible. And yet, the two monsters are not of equal strength: if we accept the assumption that there is only one reality out there, then the number of false hypotheses must be inordinately higher than the number of correct ones. In other words, there must be many more ways of being wrong than right"

Lara Croft's large breasts were the result of an accidental mouse click!
"While making test adjustments to her girlish figure, a slip of his mouse turned an intended 50% increase to her breast size into a 150% gain. It met with instant approval from the team before he could correct it."

Girls of the Yamanote | Alexandre Gervais
Like the one who sent me this, I can't tell the difference

Des esclaves sexuelles pour lutter contre l’adultère? - "Salwa al-Mutairi, une militante politique et ancienne candidate aux élections législatives a demandé la légalisation d’esclaves féminins pour les hommes musulmans du Koweït, explique Kuwait Times. Selon elle, cela permettrait d’éloigner les hommes de l’adultère et de la corruption"

An Open Letter to Girls Who Wear Too Little - "I used to wear the tiniest cropped tops with jeans to go clubbing. Yes I had nice abs, but wearing a top no bigger than a bra is quite frankly, disgusting. Then came the slew of backless tops in my wardrobe.. with nothing but a shoelace holding it together. And my worst mistake was wearing my tiny tops with the shortest of skirts. Disgusting... being able to attract horny losers is not something to be proud of... the Less-Is-More approach is not a sense of style. Instead, it suggests that you're that kind of girl who thinks being dumb, slutty, and drunk is the way to make a lasting impression"
Does this count as 'slut shaming'?

Finally, a Pill for men 'with no side-effects' which could be on the shelves in a few years

The Great Wall of Vagina - "I cast, over the course of 5 years, the vaginas (well the vulva area in fact) of hundreds of volunteers. The Great Wall of Vagina is an exploration of women's relationships with their genitals"
I wonder if anyone does this with penises

How to Talk to Cupid - "What if you want to outsmart Cupid and stay in a long-term relationship harmoniously?... How would you steer the primitive part of your brain in the direction of the results you want? It's problematic, because this primitive region of the brain predated the human rational brain (neo-cortex) by millions of years. It doesn't run on logic. This is why you can't use willpower to force yourself to fall in love or stay in love... mating frenzy (hot sex, lots of orgasms) resulting in sexual satiation (that "I'm done!" feeling) plays right into Cupid's plan. Decreasing dopamine (after the delicious neurochemical blast of orgasm) tells your limbic system, "Fertilization duty is done here; time to find this mate less alluring-and respond to any potential novel mate with gusto""

Anthony Weiner and gender politics - "We've been much too quick to ignore the role that women -- and modern feminism -- have played in setting the stage for many of these infidelities... for every disloyal and lewd male lawmaker, there's a woman (or two, or three, or more) who is all too willing to enable his behavior... it has allowed so many women to think it's permissible to have an affair with a married man"
In short, it takes two hands to clap (the claim that feminism makes affairs more likely is tenuous). A better point is that feminism, by right, means women can't play the innocent victim card anymore (not that it stops them). Contrawise, whereas women who had affairs in the past might've been portrayed as sluts, now women who have affairs are portrayed as victims, which is not necessarily an improvement.

When Scientists Act Like Jerks, Asian-Americans Reach for a Hamburger - "Americans who’d been asked if they spoke English were three times as likely to write down American foods like hamburgers or pizza as those who hadn’t been. White students wrote down the same kinds of foods either way."

Man jailed for underage sex; girl now has baby son - "A WEEK after they met in 2009, a man took a teenage girl to a staircase landing in Bukit Batok Central, where they had sex... The unemployed man, aged 25, was jailed on Tuesday for two weeks and fined $8,000 for having sex with a girl below 16... she told him she was 16"
Are there any other crimes where you are guilty even if you don't know you were committing a crime? Well, besides drug trafficking

S'pore 18th in that journey experience - "Survey shows nearly 8 in 10 public transport commuters dissatisfied"
Shanghai, New Delhi, KL, Beijing and Tokyo all ranked higher - the fact that New Delhi ranked higher shows that high expectations, nurtured by talk of world class transport, figures in it