Links - 14th November 2011

"Laughter is the closest distance between two people." - Victor Borge

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Jonathan Safran Foer's Modest Proposal: Let Them Eat Dog - "The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses. The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows. The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs... unlike all farmed meat, which requires the creation and maintenance of animals, dogs are practically begging to be eaten. Three to four million dogs and cats are euthanized annually. The simple disposal of these euthanized dogs is an enormous ecological and economic problem... In a sense it's what we're doing already. Rendering?the conversion of animal protein unfit for human consumption into food for livestock and pets?allows processing plants to transform useless dead dogs into productive members of the food chain... One could argue that various "humane" groups are the worst hypocrites, spending enormous amounts of money and energy in a futile attempt to reduce the number of unwanted dogs while at the very same time propagating the irresponsible no-dog-for-dinner taboo"

Pill affects women's taste in men - "Women who take the Pill tend to choose as partners men who are less attractive and worse in bed but a sounder bet for a long-term relationship"

Are We Not Men? - "Along with most of their critics, the lads have preferred to think that they represent a male backlash, a testosterone-soaked atavism, a rude if somewhat ironic return to the pre–James Taylor days. But their fear of women is nothing but a rueful extension of Mr. New Age’s obsequiousness, their pantomime of sexism nothing but utter compliance with the harshest feminist critique—nothing but a dancing-bear routine in the feminist tent show. It’s enough to put a real man off his popcorn. The Playboy guy of old didn’t fear women; he surrounded himself with them. And where the battle of the sexes was concerned, he gave as good as he got, not by running from or validating the criticism directed at him but by refusing to let it define him, one way or the other. To borrow some New Age jargon, he knew who he was—he was comfortable in his skin—and if certain people found him abrasive at times, so be it. He made sure to have other qualities that recommended him, qualities that included a social seriousness that was reflected as well as cultivated in the pages of Playboy magazine."

Christians fear Islamist pressure in Egypt - "The demand that all students wear the higab was a decision by administrators and teachers at the high school in Sheik Fadl, 110 miles (180 kilometers) south of Cairo in Minya province. They said the headscarf was part of the school uniform, necessary to protect girls from sexual harassment... Recent attacks on churches in southern Egypt also illustrate the heat Christians are under"

When is the right time to quit your job? - "LOVE MONEY CAREER... Your ideal job gives you all three. If your job gets two out of three then you should still consider yourself pretty lucky. Most will stay at their jobs for even just one of the above. If your job offers none of the above then you are probably a miserable human being. For your own sanity – and health – you really should consider a career change"

Nudist Camp Zombie Massacre

Most cited authors of books in the humanities, 2007
I've never heard of many of them; I love how "criticism" is a discipline

Sauna hands out VIP cards to recruit male patrons with 18cm johnsons - YouTube - "A urologist said the average Taiwanese male erect penis averages 9 to 11cm, adding that even Congolese who have the largest erect penises average 1.93cm"

UK unemployment: Wanted, BRITONS who want to work as new jobs go to migrants - "A 25-hour-a-week cleaning job paying £10 an hour that was advertised in London attracted in excess of 225 applications. Of these, just 17 were from British workers. The remainder were drawn from individuals living in this country but who originated in one of 41 countries across the globe... All of the jobs advertised attracted applications from foreign-born workers. Among the native applicants there was little evidence of the long-term unemployed looking to take their first step back into paid employment... Many of the British hopefuls were students looking to pay their way through courses or school-leavers embarking on their first jobs. The foreign applicants appeared eloquent and intelligent; most stated a determination to work hard and to get on... one has to question not only how easy it is going to be to slow down - or ever stop - the flow of migrant workers into this country, but also how British companies can be weaned away from this huge source of highly-flexible, highly-dedicated, and very hard-working, employees"
More interesting bits: how they not-so-subtly distinguish the foreign-born (some of whom are presumably citizens) from "natives", and how the proposed solution is not to make "native" Britons more highly-flexible, highly-dedicated, and very hard-working, but to make British companies hire less-flexible, less-dedicated and less hard-working "native" Britons

The absurdity of statistical surveys: it's just a numbers game - "Even last year, the BBC website continued to publicise figures suggesting that the gay population was over three per cent and might be as high as 27 per cent... For the second year running, the Office for National Statistics has produced estimates putting the population of exclusively homosexual or lesbian people at one per cent, with a further half a per cent bisexual. The figures were drawn from the biggest social survey ever conducted in Britain, based on questions answered by 413,000 people. To get an idea of the level of accuracy likely in a survey like this, bear in mind that a typical political poll uses a sample of 1,000... The problem for the myriad gay pressure groups is this: how do you keep collecting fat taxpayer grants in an age when nobody is scared of Aids any more and the large body of supposedly oppressed people you represent keeps shrinking?"

The Effect of Higher Education on Police Behavior - "Higher education carries no influence over the probability of an arrest or search occurring in a police— suspect encounter. College education does, however, significantly reduce the likelihood of force occurring"

Coming home from school with strawberry condoms - "Proper condom use, sex positions and same-sex relationships are all part of the curriculum for 14-year-old students in Swedish high schools. But many Muslim immigrants, who require their daughters and wives to wear head scarves to ensure modesty, have prevented their children from attending the classes.

‘Anti-gay’ cleric named Britain's most inspirational black person - "Agu Irukwu was chosen by 54 per cent of voters in a competition organised by Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Metro"

Prince Charles has been offered a veto over 12 government bills since 2005 - "Ministers have been forced to seek permission from Prince Charles to pass at least a dozen government bills, according to a Guardian investigation into a secretive constitutional loophole that gives him the right to veto legislation that might impact his private interests."

The campaign to 'Stamp Out Misogyny Online' echoes Victorian efforts to protect women from coarse language - "One of the great curiosities of modern feminism is that the more radical the feminist is, the more likely she is to suffer fits of Victorian-style vapours upon hearing men use coarse language... If I had a penny for every time I was crudely insulted on the internet, labelled a prick, a toad, a shit, a moron, a wide-eyed member of a crazy communist cult, I’d be relatively well-off. For better or worse, crudeness is part of the internet experience, and if you don’t like it you can always read The Lady instead. The crashing together of threats of violence with ridicule is striking, because it exposes a fairly Orwellian streak to modern feminist campaigns to “stamp out” bad things. There is an attempt here to treat words and violence as the same thing... if speech itself is a kind of violence, if ridicule is on a par with threatening behaviour, then why shouldn’t internet trolls and foul-mouthed loners be treated as seriously as the bloke who commits GBH? Muddying the historic philosophical distinction between words and actions, which has informed enlightened thinking for hundreds of years, is too high a price to pay just so some feminist bloggers can surf the web without having their delicate sensibilities riled"
Comment: "some of the worst abuse has been from feminist women, who object to my pro-life/Catholic stance. I was subject to an awful campaign whilst heavily pregnant. When I blogged about this, certain liberal commenters accused me of self pity & rambling, but as soon as I mention the stuff from the men, they are all ears"
"I see far more casually made anti-male comments and misandry from newspaper columnists, in adverts and the like than the converse"

CBS 5 Investigates mail order diseases - "Doctors and medical experts are concerned about a new trend taking place on Facebook. Parents are trading live viruses through the mail in order to infect their children"

Iran warns against Islamophobia - "They also called for the immediate lifting of economic sanctions on Islamic countries, including Iran... "It is essential to work on halting the tide of Islamophobia"... Mr al Ghurair said that Western attempts to interfere in the Muslim world under the guise of protecting the region's Christians were "a natural extension of Islamophobia", a result of a "lack of Western trust and knowledge of the tolerant reality of Islam". His comments came amid a concerted campaign in the Muslim world to respond forcefully to bombings that targeted Coptic Christians on New Year's Eve in Alexandria... One of the PUIC's resolutions stated that the union "strongly rejects the principle of imposing any kind of sanctions, whether unilateral or multilateral, on any Islamic state", in addition to demanding "their immediate lifting""

Getting brilliant students to seek jobs beyond Wall Street - "Many people don't grow up with a love for investment banking or management consulting — it's just something they hear when they don't know what to do"

Guinea pig harem says 'hello Sooty' - "A GUINEA pig called Sooty had a night to remember after escaping from his pen and tunnelling into a cage of 24 females. He romanced each of them in turn and was yesterday the proud father of 43 offspring... He was absolutely shattered. We put him back in his cage and he slept for two days"