Balderdash: 26/6/11

Thursday, July 07, 2011

Links - 7th July 2011

"I'm worried that the universe will soon need replacing. It's not holding a charge." - Edward Chilton

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The Science Creative Quarterly » WHAT’S THE SCOOP? A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF KELLOGG’S RAISIN BRAN - "Advertisements for Kellogg’s Raisin Bran indicate that there are two scoops of raisins in every box, and two plastic scoops, along with the words “Two scoops!”, appear prominently on the front of the box. Unfortunately, a scoop is a nonstandard unit of volume, so the prevalence of raisins in the cereal remains uncertain. Moreover, Kellogg’s Raisin Bran comes in 15-, 20-, and 25.5-ounce boxes, all of which bear the “Two scoops!” claim... [Hypothesis] (E) Kellogg allocates raisins via some stochastic process rather than with scoops."

YouTube - Real Truth About Slaughtering (16+) - "This shows some short clips of how humans slaughter animals. And this is what we eat."
This is good to show to so-called animal lovers

Koi Assisted Birth - "Female koi give birth to thousands or tens of thousands of babies with the assistance of their male companions. That’s exactly the kind of birthing energy I want! Also, we know that reducing stress levels promotes a healthy, safe, faster birth. I can’t think of anything more stressless than floating in a warm water tank, letting go and letting my fish companions guide me through birth."
Hilarious comments: "hope the baby's a girl, call it Ariel?"
"listening to my inner wisdom, I chose to birth out in the woods. It was a beautiful, soul-satisfying outdoor unassisted labour and birth - with a fox barking under a full moon and an owl flying past. I left my placenta as a gift to mother earth who had nurtured us, and my son is still such a wood lover and a fox is definitely his totem animal."
"Koi are cold water fish, do you know what happens when you heat the water up? They die"

The rich and powerless of Sentosa Cove - "In Singapore, that cohort of rich and powerful do not live in Sentosa Cove. They live in another part of town called “District 10”"
"One also gets the distinct feeling that you are happier in a system where carefully cultivated connections yield the desired return"

The perils of human trafficking hysteria - "According to the anti-trafficking industry, poor or illegal migrants are not independent individuals seeking to improve their lives by taking risks and travelling to distant lands. Instead, the assumption is that people (especially women) from poor countries are naive, pathetic and helpless and that they need to be "rescued". The anti-traffickers reject the notion that poor migrants have free will and choice... very often when the alleged "victims" fail to identify themselves as such, they are said to be "lying", "terrorised" or "brainwashed". This is a terrifying logic that effectively suggests that no evidence of oppression should be seen as evidence of particularly severe oppression. One is free to imagine where such thinking can lead."

Fantasy Game Book: Beastmen of Bangkok - "The Yellow Shirts, or Peoples' Alliance for Democracy, realising that they cannot capture the popular mandate, have elected for a 'Vote No' campaign, reasoning that all politicians, presumably themselves excluded, are corrupt carpet-baggers who should be kept away from parliament at all costs. As a result they've come up with a brilliant series of posters unflatteringly comparing politicians to a range of hideous beasts"

Lunacy and the Full Moon - "45 percent of college students believe moonstruck humans are prone to unusual behaviors, and other surveys suggest that mental health professionals may be still more likely than laypeople to hold this conviction... Following Aristotle and Pliny the Elder, some contemporary authors, such as Miami psychiatrist Arnold Lieber, have conjectured that the full moon’s supposed effects on behavior arise from its influence on water. The human body, after all, is about 80 percent water, so perhaps the moon works its mischievous magic by somehow disrupting the alignment of water molecules in the nervous system... a mosquito sitting on our arm exerts a more powerful gravitational pull on us than the moon does... many people fall prey to... “illusory correlation”... the full moon may have been linked to a heightened rate of bizarre behaviors in long-bygone eras"
Just because you are in a field does not mean you are necessarily right about matters in it. For example pilots apparently believe that mobile phones interfere with flight equipment

Bernard Henri Levy > Version complète de l’interview de Bernard-Henri Lévy dans Le Parisien de ce matin. - "Il a payé d’une mise au pilori mondiale (c’est-à-dire, pour un homme comme lui, d’une peine quasi capitale) un crime qu’il n’avait pas commis... Vous connaissez la formule de Condorcet, sous la Terreur de Robespierre ? Je cite de mémoire : « le zèle compatissant des prétendus amis du peuple ». Eh bien ce qu’on a vu, là, c’est le lynchage compatissant des prétendus amis des minorités... Madame Diallo, parce qu’elle était pauvre et immigrée, était forcément innocente. Monsieur Strauss-Kahn, parce qu’il était puissant, était forcément coupable. Et dans ce monde effrayant où on peut donc prendre un homme de chair et de sang, en faire un symbole abstrait et, dans la peau de ce symbole, coudre tout le paquet de rancoeurs et de ressentiments de l’époque, c’est la justice, la simple justice, qui passe à l’as. C’est terrible à dire, mais c’est comme ça : la grande leçon de cette affaire c’est que la présomption d’innocence est redevenue une idée neuve – tant en Europe qu’aux Etats-Unis."
"He paid... a pillorying world (i.e. for a man like him, an almost capital crime) for a crime he did not commit... You know the line of Condorcet, about the Terror of Robespierre? I quote from memory: 'The compassionate zeal of the so-called friends of the people'. So what we view here, is compassionate lynching by so-called friends of minorities... Ms Diallo, because she was poor and an immigrant, was surely innocent. Mr Strauss-Kahnn, because he was powerful, was surely guilty. And in this scary world where we can take a man of blood and flash, make him an abstract symbole and, on the skin of the symbol sew a packet of bitterness and resentment of the age, that's justice: simple justice. It's horrible to say it, but that's the way it is: the major lesson of this affair is that the presumption of innocent has again become a new idea - in Europe as much as in the US"

Yes, Ladies, You Can Walk Around the City Topless - New York News

Singapore has world’s most enthusiastic police force - "Google has ranked Singapore number one in the world per capita in terms of demanding that the Internet giant release certain information on individuals deemed criminal. The question is: If Singapore is so crime-free, how come there are so many requests?... How many of these people the police were checking up on really “criminals”. Or were they activists, politicans, and NGO workers?... In 2009, when a bunch of graffiti artists decided to spray some art on Singapore’s few LEGAL graffiti walls for the Palestinian cause, the authorities forbade them. Plain-clothed policemen even stationed themselves near the walls to ensure the rascals obey the government. And two years before that, this local blogger documented that police took down information and videotaped a protest happening right in the heart of Orchard Road — involving Ultraman figurines."

Judge defends decision to dismiss burqa wearing woman Carnita Matthews' conviction - "The original court decision had found Mrs Matthews falsely claimed a racist police officer had tried to lift her burqa when she was pulled over for a random breath test last June. It was allegedly she then subsequently made a false complaint about the officer. But Judge Jefferies said that he could not be "satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt" that it was Mrs Matthews who made the complaint about a police officer at Campbelltown Police Station. She was wearing a burqa at the time."
My head just exploded

7 Burka-Clad Terrorists Captured in Nangarhar - "Afghan border police captured 7 terrorists who disgused themselves as women in burkas... Militants often use burkas to carry out their attacks and some insurgents disguised in burqas have previously been captured by Afghan security organisations"

Coming to a Dental School Near You: The Dental Robot With the Sex-Doll Face

snopes.com: Seat Belt Death - "Anti-seat belt law advocate is killed in automobile accident."

UK terrorists told: Pretend to be gay so you don't get caught

Pakistani Muslims condemn US gay rights meeting - "A group of conservative Islamic political and religious officials has condemned a meeting by the U.S. Embassy supporting gay rights in Pakistan as "cultural terrorism" against the country. The group, which included the head of Pakistan's largest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, claimed the meeting - the first of its kind held by the embassy - was the second most dangerous attack by the U.S. against Pakistan, following missiles fired from unmanned drones... The Islamic officials demanded the Pakistani government arrest the participants under the country's laws and said the meeting was "tantamount to stabbing the Muslim world in the chest.""
Islamophobia!

Why I drove the last train out - "Besides trains, I fly jets, helicopters, and I sail my own yacht. I am never a boring person. Everything to me is a challenge. I always like to find something new to do. Every day, I look at the weather and think to myself, what should I do today?"
"wow, you drive planes, cars, trains, etc. do you ride a bicycle?"

What has Chiam See Tong done for university education? - "In short, DPM Tony Tan and future education ministers repeatedly rebutted calls to set up a new university or for existing universities to expand their intake. It was none other than long time opposition MP Chiam See Tong whose calls to build more universities or to expand intake at local universities which repeatedly fell on deaf ears, until it was apparent that Singapore lacked graduates and had to import foreign talent to make up the shortfall"

The Technium: The Shirky Principle - "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution"

No, it’s not “carbon pollution” - "Carbon dioxide isn't pollution but plant food for photosynthesis"

France/Spain 2011 - Day 3, Part 1 - Strasbourg

"The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." - William James

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France/Spain 2011
Day 3 - 19th March - Strasbourg (Part 1)

View from hostel room window

Note that the logo of the restaurant ("le Plateau") is a cow as well as a plate.

At breakfast they were out of English Tea, so I took "Verveine" (Verbena). And added milk to something that turned out to resemble Green Tea.

I was super nua this morning, because of the 9km walk the previous day (though my dinner host said she hiked 9km in the forest every other day) and because it was -3 to 7 degrees outside. So I only left at 8:55am!

"Vous êtes Séparé(e), Divorcé(e) ou Veuf(ve)? Vous cherchez de nouveaux amis ?"
"Are you separated, divorced or widowed? Are you looking for new friends"
Hurr hurr. This is actually a good idea.

Eglise catholique Saint Pierre le Jeune (Catholic Church of St Peter the Young. There're 3 other St Peter's in the city)

Statue of Charles de Foucauld in front of the church. He "was a French Catholic religious and priest living among the Tuareg in the Sahara in Algeria. He was assassinated in 1916 outside the door of the fort he built for protection of the Tuareg and is considered by the Catholic Church to be a martyr"

Palais de Justice

Bilingual road sign: Rue du Général de Castelnau / Am Roseneck
I like how it doesn't translate. Also not all roads were bilingual so I suspect it was for tourists.

I then headed to the Place de la République (Republic Square). It seems all French towns have a Place de la République. And a Rue de la République.

I'd previously downloaded a French audioguide from SNCF (the rail company) for Strasbourg so I got some commentary. For some reason the library only had Paris and Provence guidebooks; being in Alsace for only 2 days I relied on SNCF, the Office du Tourisme (which ave me pamphlets in English, hah) and a local I met later.

"A nos morts en Indochine et en Afrique du Nord"
("To our dead in Indochina and North Africa")
The war memorial was especially poignant, with families split with members on both sides during World War I.

In 1871 the Germans took over and build an administrative centre here (moving from the old city).

Palais du Rhin. Commission centrale pour la navigation du Rhin

Prefecture building for the Lower Rhine

National Library and University

National Theatre

Place de la République:

360 degree feature of my camera. This is one of the few shots which looks better on my computer than on my camera (the Fuji F300EXR's failings can be the subject of an entire blogpost)

Poster for a Janáček opera. Despite my feelings about 20th century composers, I would've been willing to give him a try if the schedule had permitted it.

"Le Tchad 1940
Koufra 1941
Le Fezzan 1942
Tripolitaine Tunisie 1943
Paris-Strasbourg 1944
Jurez de ne déposer les armes que le jour ou nos couleurs nos belles couleurs flotteront sur la cathédrale de Strasbourg"
("Swear not to lay down weapons until the day when our colours, beautiful colours fly from the Cathedral of Strasbourg")
This was a vow for the liberation of France made by General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, to whom this obelisk is dedicated. Funfair around notwithstanding.
Apparently he was appointed a Marshal of France 5 years after his death.

Guess what building this is.

It was election season so I amused myself reading campaign posters. There were 2 main types of posters:

Type 1: Wall of Text
They're supported by "Women of Alsace" and are working "for a vibrant, creative democracy showing solidarity" (by sending kids to National Education centres, mixing age groups in housing and the creation of social spaces). They also want quotas for women in all majority (?) elections, sigh.

Type 2: Picture
"A new political breath"
In contrast with the previous poster, this was big on face and low on details so I assume she wanted people to vote for her looks.

A quack doctor who does homeopathy.

This Diesel ad stood out for not having a French translation for its copy.

Confectionary Shop window

A concert poster advertised: "Don Juan Ouverture". Hurr hurr.

At the cathedral I met my local contact, and he showed me around.