Links- 12th July 2011

"Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all." - William Goldman

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Important to channel energy of animal lovers constructively - "At one point, the crowd erupted in jeers when a dog breeder's name was mentioned by one participant, prompting Mr Shanmugam to appeal to those present to keep the dialogue 'civilised'... A forum participant said the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority, which investigates complaints of animal abuse, was not doing enough, and called for an independent policing unit to ensure that abusers are prosecuted. Mr Shanmugam, who is Minister for Law and Foreign Affairs, pointed out that it is not easy to convict someone of animal abuse given that in these cases, the animal victims are unable to testify. In the legal system, it has to be proven beyond reasonable doubt that a person did commit a crime before he can be convicted... A suggestion for mandatory caning of animal abusers was also floated, but Mr Shanmugam said that implementing this would be to swim against the tide of international opinion in this area, given that the general trend is against caning."
Mandatory caning for animal abusers? I'm really scared of these so-called animal lovers. And I'm 99% sure the person who suggested that is not vegetarian.

Wimbledon hawk eye system that takes to the skies - ""He does not kill pigeons, but his presence is enough to frighten them away. It is a deterrent, and an environmentally friendly and unobtrusive way to keep the courts clear"

The 7 Biggest Dick Moves in the History of Online Gaming - "He posted a 15-minute video bragging about how he got away with it, mocking his loyal employees at EIB, enemies who failed to stop him and the suckers who basically paid for a second job -- essentially paying for the right to have their money stolen. Understand: Cally is now officially smarter than every Bond villain put together, because he found a way to give an expository monologue without getting killed."

Why one biscuit is never enough: Doctors reveal the science of hunger pangs - and what you can do about them - "Variation in these appetite traits is largely genetic and can even be measured in babies. Studies of identical twins adopted at birth show that at the age of 30 their body weight had no relation to their adoptive family but was identical to the twin they’d never seen."
The theory of socialisation says that we're socialised into finding food desirable. So if you socialised babies to eat shit they'd eat shit

How China could yet fail like Japan - "As growth slows, the demand for investment is sure to shrink. At growth of 7 per cent, the needed rate of investment could fall by up to 15 per cent of GDP. But the attempt to shift income to households could force a yet bigger decline. From being an growth engine, investment could become a source of stagnation"

YouTube - ‪MTF 1 year transition timeline‬‏
It's the eyeliner

Is Pornography Driving Men Crazy? - Naomi Wolf - "As with any addiction, it is very difficult, for neurochemical reasons, for an addict to stop doing things – even very self-destructive things – that enable him to get that next hit of dopamine. Could this be why men who in the past could take time-delayed steps to conduct affairs behind closed doors now can’t resist the impulse to send a self-incriminating text message? If so, such men might not be demons or moral ciphers, but rather addicts who are no longer entirely in control of themselves... Understanding how pornography affects the brain and wreaks havoc on male virility permits people to make better-informed choices – rather than engage in pointless self-loathing or reactive collective judgments"
Wow, I imagine before the modern era men didn't proposition women as openly. "Pointless self-loathing or reactive collective judgments" seems to describe her essay very well

Powerful Women as Likely to Cheat as Men Study Finds
And yet powerful women have almost no sex scandals (even in Sweden). Either revealed preferences are different from stated preferences, or there're issues with reporting. The claim that it's because women are saints is questionable (and given that books like "Why Women Should Rule the World" ["men get made fun at, poked, insulted, challenged and disrespected"] are published, telling)

Love Academy Seeks to Restore French Sex Legacy Tainted by Strauss-Kahn - "Sex in France is more than an indoor sport. It’s political. America’s national symbol is the bald eagle. The British have a bull dog. France has Marianne, a woman with exotic breasts bared. As Eugene Delacroix’s celebrated painting “Liberty Leading the People” graphically shows, she’s spearheading a path through France’s enemies to a brighter future... Corniola says her role is to teach students how to avoid dangerous and doomed sexual liaisons. “The course goes for nine months,” she explains, taking my hand to show the correct way to greet a woman during a first encounter of the close kind. The touch is soft, with the man giving the woman’s hand a slight and gentle turn to the right. “Look into her eyes with a smile,” she instructs. “Nowadays men and women go from coffee to sex and that’s not good.”"

The Must Have Jailbreak Apps
Alternatively, DON'T GET AN IPHONE

Abercrombie & Fitch sued over hijab firing - "Abercrombie requires that employees dress in natural, "beachy" clothes such as jeans, flip-flops and a T-shirt"
Could a feminist organisation fire an employee for wearing a hijab?

US woman sprays police with breast milk

Narrowing Racial divide - "THE current wave of migrant workers from China and India has had an unintended side benefit for Singapore, blurring differences between local Chinese and Malays. The new competition they introduced into the workforce has helped to get these once quarrelling races to put aside old discords and jointly face the common challenge."
Classic journalism theorising based on anecdotes aside, "Me against my brother; me and my brother against my father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world"

Gregory Rodriguez: The virtue of 'I don't know' - "We seem to be obsessed with opinions because we take them to be a marker of individual independence, distinctiveness and reasoned intelligence. Expressing opinions is how we also express our freedom of conscience and flex our political rights. But when we're obliged to have an opinion on everything, all the time, our expressions of conscience are less about independent thinking than about making stuff up... "no answer" isn't a missing data point (or a sign of a respondent's moral failure); having no opinion is a perfectly valid position. In fact, a "don't know" option can increase the accuracy of survey findings"

Microsoft Helps Army Avoid ‘Death by PowerPoint’ - "Blaming PowerPoint for an inscrutable slide is like blaming Twitter for DMing pictures of your penis to unsuspecting followers"

Shocked woman dies at own funeral after heart attack - "Fagilyu Mukhametzyanov, 49, had been wrongly declared deceased by doctors but died for real after hearing mourners saying prayers for her soul to be taken up to heaven in Kazan, Russia."

The SAF soldier's latest weapon - the iPad - "The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) plans to issue about 8,000 sets, including to every recruit in the BMT Centre and those in other institutes such as the Officer Cadet School and the Specialist Cadet School, as well as to servicemen in the air force and naval training schools... Handheld devices are light and can be packed with applications to access information on-the-go. Out in the field, the troops can use the in-built camera in the handheld sets to take photos and videos, tag them and make notes during training. These photos and video clips will be uploaded and archived on the SAF's online platform, LEARNet, so troops can use them to carry out post-mortems. Questions can be directed to their commanders through a live messaging system. Discussions will be held in the chat system."
It's very sexy to say we should cut the defence budget. It's even sexier to give all recruits an iPad. Is anyone asking why the Defence budget is so high? Anyhow no one's going to take this outfield unless damage doesn't result in a docking of slave pittance

CORRELATION OF CAUSATIVE EXTROVERT FACTORS AND THE FREQUENCY OF TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS INVOLVING BUS DRIVERS
"One study of bus drivers even found that accidents are more likely to occur when extroverts are at the wheel"

Is Shyness an Evolutionary Tactic? - NYTimes.com - "Introverts, who tend to digest information thoroughly, stay on task, and work accurately, earn disproportionate numbers of National Merit Scholarship finalist positions and Phi Beta Kappa keys, according to the Center for Applications of Psychological Type, a research arm for the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator — even though their I.Q. scores are no higher than those of extroverts... the more time people spend socializing, the less time they have for learning"

Oral sex expected of Gen Y: survey - "Young women were overwhelmingly positive about oral sex - 82 per cent said they found it ''enjoyable and rewarding''. The most common reason for having oral sex, according to the survey was: ''It feels good.''"