Links - 27th February 2012

"Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children." - George Bernard Shaw

***

State of the Western RPG - "There was indeed a dramatic shift in the mid-1990s, but it was not the collapse of the PC RPG as often heralded... It was instead a shift from party-based systems to single character-based systems... RPGs have become more action-oriented than the turn-based games of the past... BioWare games are story-based, Bethesda games are system-based... This is an old division, going back to the days of Ultima's innovation in world-building and storytelling compared to Wizardry's tweaks in character creation and class switching"

Haenyo - The Female Divers of Jeju Island - "Since large taxes were imposed on the sale of these items, men hardly ever dove in search of them. However, a loophole in the law allowed women divers to sell these creatures of the sea, tax free. This gave way to a large number of female divers around the 1800s. Slowly, this occupation grew to become a major driving force in the economy of the country. The women divers began to call themselves the haenyo. The growing presence of the haenyo had major cultural implications as well. Since the economy thrived under their tutelage, it naturally gave way to the formation of a matriarchal society – where women were held equal, if not superior, to men"

[GPGT][FBT画廊] FBT Babes Galore - www.hardwarezone.com.sg
I retrieved this for a lesbian

The Life and Death of Pvt. Danny Chen - "A group of his superiors allegedly tormented Chen on an almost daily basis over the course of about six weeks in Afghanistan last fall. They singled him out, their only Chinese-American soldier, and spit racial slurs at him: “gook,” “chink,” “dragon lady.” They forced him to do sprints while carrying a sandbag. They ordered him to crawl along gravel-covered ground while they flung rocks at him. And one day, when his unit was assembling a tent, he was forced to wear a green hard-hat and shout out instructions to his fellow soldiers in Chinese"
One comment on this story: "WTF is "Taishanese" and by the fact the journalist misspelt the mother's name by putting her surname at the back, shows the very root of the problem : most ppl don't give a shit abt understanding other cultures n races. So much for being outwardly anti-racism, deep down inside most ppl r no better than the KKK." - SPOING!

Breast implants: the first 50 years | Life and style - "Even in countries where breast implants are very popular, the overall aesthetic is often different. In Brazil, for instance, there's often a strong focus on the buttocks as well, while some suggest that French women prefer a smaller breast... Many breast augmentation doctors are male, but it's too simple to suggest it's just an operation imposed on women by men... between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries... "it was just phenomenal the different contraptions women had used to augment their breasts. I was astounded, because I thought it would be mostly men who had invented these breast augmentations, but actually it was mostly women"... The writer Jennifer Hayashi Danns, author of Stripped, also sees breast implants as an operation keenly related to materialism... there was a feeling of "instant gratification" she says. "It wasn't a question of profound, long-term happiness. It felt like getting a new car, or a new bag""

Envisioning a Post-Campus America - "Online education will kill the liberal arts degree. Let's not have the same dismal discussion of whether liberal arts degrees are awesome or useless. The important aspect for this discussion is that what they teach is hard to test efficiently. There's enormous variation in grading of, say, English papers, and even if it were easier to standardize, that grading requires hours of expensive labor...
Tenured academics has worked a great scam. They've managed to monetize peoples' affection for regional football teams, and their desire for a work credential, and then somehow diverted that money into paying academics to work on whatever they want, for the rest of their lives, without any oversight by the football fans or the employers"

The
Freedom, and Perils, of Living Alone - NYTimes.com - "Amy Kennedy, 28, a schoolteacher who has a two-bedroom apartment in High Point, N.C., all to herself, calls it living without “social checks and balances.” The effects are noticeable, she said: “I’ve been living alone for six years, and I’ve gotten quirkier and quirkier”... Ms. Kennedy... has developed the kind of quirky, absentminded habit that’s great if you’re an eccentric character in a Southern novel, but not if you want to be seen as good roommate (or romantic) material. Pulling a sweater, boots and tights from her dryer-slash-dresser one recent morning, she forgot to grab her skirt, and left the house without wearing one. “I realized it when I got halfway to work — damn it, I forgot my skirt,” she said. And it’s not the first time that’s happened"

Intimidation | First Week In - YouTube - ""Something that needs to be disciplined, basically this whole place has got cameras... it gets taken care of in the bathrooms... 'You read the rules, and you understand that number one rule is no disrespect. I was told that yesterday you disrespected the head of the Pisces... regardless of how you meant it, we take disrespect real seriously'... chin check is: basically one of the torpedoes goes in, real quick... broke his jaw. You bring him into the back corner over here, you set him against the wall... 'We gotta maintain some authority... certain basic, fundamental rules'. 'It's pretty ugly. People's teeth get chipped. It's not really pretty. I don't enjoy doing it but when people break the rules, we gotta do what we gotta do to keep the peace in here'"
Amused that the justification for prisoners beating each other up is like that for military discipline

Is English or Mandarin the language of the future? - "The assumption that Mandarin will grow with China's economic rise may be flawed. Consider Japan... The Japanese language saw no comparable rise in power and prestige. The same may prove true of Mandarin. The character-based writing system requires years of hard work for even native speakers to learn, and poses a formidable obstacle to foreigners... For speakers of tonal languages (like Vietnamese) learning the tones of Mandarin poses no particular difficulty. But speakers of non-tonal languages struggle to learn tones in adulthood... The success of movies such as Kung Fu Panda, an American production about a Chinese animal, has caused a lot of anxiety in China, he says. There have been many cartoons in China about pandas before, but none had reached commercial success, says Mr Lee. "The moment Kung Fu Panda hit the cinemas everybody watched it. They bought the merchandise and they learned English""

Pictured: Aerial escape as stingray takes flight from hungry killer whale

Jacksonville Church Hires Registered Sex Offender as Pastor, Bans Children from Service - "Oddly, Gilyard's arrival at the church has caused a spike in attendance. Before Gilyard joined the church about 10 members came to service. Now the numbers are between 150 and 200."

Facebook's nudity and violence guidelines are laid bare - "It is a glimpse of its inner workings – and odd prejudices about sex – that emphasise its American origins."

What’s the Difference Between a Street and a Road?

UOB ‘blackface’ dudes are racist — not | New Nation - "In Singapore, ‘blackface’ was never, as far as I know, a part of our cultural makeup (pardon the pun). It’s as absurd as being told off by a Nigerian that giving the thumbs up is offensive, which sure sounds like a scam. Again, context matters."
As usual when the topic involves race and religion in Singapore, the comments are very depressing

delanceyplace.com 2/20/12 - even george washington was vilified - "even George Washington faced protests and vilification during his time in office"

Twitter Reveals People Are Happiest in the Morning

God Hates Singapore - "This nation has engulfed themselves in idolatry. They are celebrating some festival or holiday every time you look at them. Add to that their filthy lifestyles full of adultory and fornication with a false religion, then you are looking at a nation in full rebellion against God. They turned their backs on Him, now he is cursing them with floods, fires, heart disease and AIDs is running rampant across the nation. Singapore is doomed!"

My point - "To strengthen racial harmony... Singaporeans should learn to have an open, mature discussion of major religious differences without getting all worked up... Religious harmony can be better solidified, not through finding similarities among the major religions in Singapore but through understanding one another's deep doctrinal differences"

omonatheydidnt: the science behind kim soohyuns attractive voice - "His voice is good in low, medium and even up to higher frequency tones, but it’s especially strong in the lower register.” He also explained, “It could be said that this is the type of voice that appeals to a woman’s rational instincts"

Why Quantum Theory Is So Misunderstood

France Drops ‘Mademoiselle’ From Official Use - NYTimes.com - "Prime Minister François Fillon ordered the honorific — akin to “damsel” and the equivalent of “miss” — banished from official forms and registries... [Not] all Frenchwomen rejoiced at news of the change, given not only long tradition but also widespread disdain for more avid strains of feminism, deemed to lack sufficient appreciation for the joys offered by the differences between the sexes. Men are often called “jeune homme,” or “young man,” through their 20s, and not “monsieur,” Ms. de Haas noted... “It’s flattering,” she said. “I often call women ‘mademoiselle.’ It’s pleasing. It makes a person feel younger!”"

Teenage girl dies after inhaling helium at party

The myth of the eight-hour sleep - "In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks."

Women In Red Rein Men - "women wearing red appear more sexually attractive to men thus; men will be more likely to spend more money on their dates"

Why should anyone care if Yaw Shin Leong screws a goat? - "If I had to pick between a sexually immoral man who does no harm to the world, like Mr Bunga Bunga Berlusconi for example, or a God-fearing, family-loving man like George W. Bush who declares war on the third world country without adequate proof that they could actually destroy the world as we know it, give me Berlusconi any day."