Links - 25th December 2011

"Destiny is for people who are too lazy to create alternate timelines." - R. Stevens

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Why Unison is wrong to seek the sacking and arrest of Jeremy Clarkson - "The trade union Unison is seeking "urgent legal advice" about what to do regarding Jeremy Clarkson's comments about strikers being "executed in front of their families... they are neither more nor less outrageous than, say, the Scottish comedian Limmy wishing Margaret Thatcher dead. In neither case were the comments particularly funny... here we have a trade union calling for someone to be summarily sacked. No disciplinary procedure, no due process, no contract rights: the man should be fired immediately"

Is Joshua Bell a good busker? - "The Washington Post published an article about an experiment they did: they got Joshua Bell, one of the best violinists in the world, to play incognito in a subway station. They wanted to see if without the PR he usually gets for his stage performances anybody would stop to listen. The result was – hardly anybody stoped to listen... The thing is Joshua Bell is a great violinist but he doesn’t know how to busk"

Boy dies after masturbating 42 times

Kiwi women most promiscuous in the world - "New Zealand women have an average of 20.4 sexual partners, according to a survey by condom-maker Durex. The global average was 7.3... New Zealand was also unusual for being the only country where women have more sexual partners than their men... Other aspects of the survey have been released throughout the year putting New Zealand teenagers among the youngest in the world to lose their virginity... New Zealanders have sex an average 122 times a year. This outperforms Australians, who have sex 106 times a year. But less than half (43 per cent) of New Zealanders are fully satisfied with their sex lives. That was way behind Nigeria, the most sexually satisfied nation, where 67 per cent were content. Japan was the least satisfied nation, with just 15 per cent being fully satisfied with their sex lives"

Smoking May Make Your Nipples Fall Off - "smokers who undergo breast lifts are at great risk of losing their nipples... if you are having a tummy tuck and you smoke, you may get an infection resulting in a big gross open wound that will take three months to heal. If you are having a facelift and you smoke, the skin of your cheek could turn black and slough off, leaving exposed fat"

Oh deer! Ram falls in love with deer

Japan wants people to slim down

Is it time to kill the liberal arts degree? - Salon.com - "Depending on how you look at it, I either spent a long time finding myself, or wasted seven years. And while all these efforts hardly add up to a tragedy (largely because I had the luxury of supportive parents willing to supplement my income for a time), I do have to admit feeling disillusioned as I moved from one gig to another, feeling as though my undergraduate education, far from preparing me for any kind of meaningful and remunerative work, had in some ways deprepared me... for every person I know who parlayed a degree in English or anthropology into a career-track gig, I know two others who weren’t so lucky, who, in that awful, post-college year or two or three or four, unemployed and uninsured and uncommitted to any particular field, racked up credit card debt or got married to the wrong person or went to law school for no particular reason or made one of a dozen other time- and money-wasting mistakes. And the common thread in all these stories seems to be how surprised these graduates were by their utter unemployability, a feeling of having been misled into complacency, issued reassurances about how the pedigree or prestige of the institution they’d attended would save them... When I asked him how a 22-year-old with no job, no income, no health insurance and, in some cases, six figures of college debt to pay off is supposed to be a citizen of the world, he said he had no comment, that he was the wrong person to talk to, and he directed me to another dean, who was also unable to comment"
Comment: "Don't kill the liberal arts BA, but stop selling it fraudulently. Universities these days are promoting BA's as a ticket to higher income and more fulfilling jobs"

Singapore's URA: Too Much Planning? - Architect Magazine - "Everything was being planned with such efficiency and with such an eye to latest theories of what makes good urban environment that there was no opportunity for chance, ad hoc activities, or the joy of contrasts... Singapore is a lively place. It is becoming –again partially by design, because the planners all read Richard Florida—a creative and gay Mecca"
What? No talk of 377A? Heresy!

Tact Filters - "When normal people talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they say, and no one's feelings get hurt. When nerds talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear, and no one's feelings get hurt. However, when normal people talk to nerds, the nerds often get frustrated because the normal people seem to be dodging the real issues and not saying what they really mean. Worse yet, when nerds talk to normal people, the normal people's feelings often get hurt because the nerds don't apply tact, assuming the normal person will take their blunt statements and apply whatever tact is necessary"

Samuel L Ipsum | Alternative Lorem Ipsum Generator - "motherfucking placeholder text motherfucker!"

Jew or Not Jew: Choosing the Chosen People - "We evaluate how Jewish a person is based on three factors. How Jewish they are internally, how Jewish they are externally and how much we want that person to be a Jew in the first place"

1 in 5 men here cheat on partners
Strangely, another perspective on the same report, "Local women ranked top 5 most unfaithful" ("Some 19% of Singaporean women admitted that they were unfaithful to their spouses, placing local women among the top five most unfaithful in the world") is no longer available on insing

The Coke Zero & Mentos Rocket Car: Mark II - YouTube

Blueprint for a Woman's Life - "There is an incredible amount of research to show that there should be a single, primary caregiver for the first year. I know that's not good for feminism. But none of this post is... Smart women in their 20s are looking for husbands and cannot be 100% focused on some pie-in-the-sky startup. Women in their 30s are having kids and trying to figure out how to work less. Men are more easily focused solely on work. That's why there is a salary gap between men and women... if you are in your 40s and reading this, take solace in the fact that by the time women are in their 40s they are great in bed, so if you do nothing else, figure out how to have a lot of sex to leverage your hard-earned talent"

Red Cross: Video gamers safe from war crimes prosecution - "While the Movement works vigorously to promote international humanitarian law (IHL) worldwide, there is also an audience of approximately 600 million gamers who may be virtually violating IHL"
Some people are too free

Demand For Same-sex Marriage: Evidence From The United States, Canada, And Europe - "The highest estimate to date of the proportion of gays and lesbians who have married in any jurisdiction where it is available is 16.7% (Massachusetts). More typically, our survey of marriage statistics from various countries that legally recognize same-sex unions suggests that today between 1% and 5% of gays and lesbians have entered into a same-sex marriage... Trend data is extremely limited, but the available data suggest that the number of gay marriages tends to decrease after an initial burst (reflecting pent up demand)"

Goose army in Ghent, Belgium - YouTube

Violent knights feared posttraumatic stress - "Although the brothers felt no pleasure from killing the husband, and even tried to avoid doing so, they felt they were forced to kill him to re-establish their honour"
The exact same logic can be applied to honour killings today. And the PTSD conclusion seems to be based on a sample size of exactly one

Old cinema returns to erotic films - "Yangtze had tried screening blockbusters for three months but results were lackluster... 'Business has risen 20% this year and nearly 1,000 people show up every day for the erotic films'... 'There's nothing wrong with screening erotic films since there is demand for such films. Sometimes I even see old men hobbling on canes going up to see the films. Well, there's nothing wrong with spending a few dollars for an afternoon's entertainment.' But Mr Lu points out that the old men should not watch too many such films. He believes that it will numb them to stimulation and weaken their "reaction""

Life Of Lopsided 8: What differentiates Buddhism from Christianity - "It is very true what The Rolling Stones said in one of their songs, singing along with their guitars: “I tried and I tried and I tried, but I can’t get no satisfaction.” Actually, this is exactly the same as what the Buddha said... Christianity talks about compassion but it is mainly for poor people. There is no compassion for rich people. However, rich people also have many sufferings, particularly mental ones. Compassion is only mentioned for a few people, like poor and sick people, and there is no mention of compassion for animals, such as pigs, sheep, goats, fish and so forth. The Bible even says that goats, sheep, fish and so forth are given by God for people to eat, which is completely wrong. Whether God has compassion or not is a big question. If God has compassion, then why doesn’t God have compassion for animals? Is it that God has compassion only for some people, for those who believe in him, but does not have compassion for those who don’t believe in him? Buddha has compassion for everyone – those who criticize Buddha, give up Buddha and do not believe in Buddha – Buddha has compassion for all"
Usually one reads about the reverse, so you can put them together and watch the explosion

Des couples sous vide, avec “photographer Hal”
Zentai has become... Art?!

Frequent sex can prevent pregnancy complications - "Much indicates that a couple’s sexual activity together affects the risk of the woman developing pre-eclampsia during a later pregnancy... There is also a more controversial study that has found a connection between oral sex and a reduced risk of developing pre-eclampsia"

The myth that religion is more about practice than belief - "Whatever some might say about religion being more about practice than belief, more praxis than dogma, more about the moral insight of mythos than the factual claims of logos, the vast majority of churchgoing Christians appear to believe orthodox doctrine at pretty much face value... when responding to atheist criticisms, the accusation cannot be that they misrepresent religion. The best that can be said is that atheists focus too much on religion as it is most usually found and should pay more attention to the better forms"
Bye bye Karen Armstrong

Apple co-founder says S'pore is too straitlaced - "Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has claimed that the tech giant "could never have happened in a formal culture in Singapore"... "Look at structured societies like Singapore where bad behaviour is not tolerated and can get you extreme punishments: Where are the creative people? Where are the great artists, where are the great musicians, where are the great writers, where are the great athletes?""