Links - 1st July 2012

"In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri." - Douglas Adams

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Marcus Geduld's answer to Do feminism and gender equality cause homosexuality in modern society? If so, how? - Quora - "I count myself as a man who was adversely affected by Feminism -- in a way that, from my discussions with others of my age and background, is not all that rare... I grew up in a politically-radical university town in the 60s, 70s and 80s, and I was sent a pretty unambiguous message that male sexuality was bad. Mainstream Feminism has lightened up since then, but when I was a kid (and a teenager), I was taught that if I ever thought about a woman sexually, I was basically a rapist. And, as the son of liberal professors, I believed that an espoused it. It caused me no end of grief. It taught me I was bad to the core. In fact, due to my upbringing, I think I have at least some understanding of what it's like to grow up gay in a culture that says you're wrong for having certain feelings. And, maybe because of that, many of my closest friends have been gay. I even lived with a gay man -- my closest friend -- for five years in something akin to a platonic marriage. To sum up: I grew up ashamed of being straight... I very often wished I was gay, because I would have been a lot less lonely"

‘The Catalogue of Anti-Male Shaming Tactics’ « Exposing Feminism - "Shaming tactics are emotional devices meant to play on a man’s insecurities and shut down debate.  They are meant to elicit sympathy for women and to demonize men who ask hard questions.  Most, if not all, shaming tactics are basically ad homimem attacks...
Charge of Irascibility (Code Red)
Charge of Cowardice (Code Yellow)
Charge of Hypersensitivity (Code Blue) – The Crybaby Charge
Charge of Puerility (Code Green) – The Peter Pan Charge
Charge of Endangerment (Code Orange) – The Elevated Threat Charge
Charge of Rationalization (Code Purple) – The Sour Grapes Charge
Charge of Fanaticism (Code Brown) – The Brown Shirts Charge
Charge of Invirility (Code Lavender)
Charge of Overgeneralization (Code Gray)
Charge of Misogyny (Code Black)
Charge of Instability (Code White) – The White Padded Room Charge
Charge of Selfishness (Code Silver)
Charge of Superficiality (Code Gold) – The All-That-Glitters Charge
Charge of Unattractiveness (Code Tan) – The Ugly Tan Charge
Charge of Defeatism (Code Maroon)
Threat of Withheld Affection (Code Pink) – The Pink Whip"

Condemned to be virgins: The two million women robbed by the war - "One hazy morning in 1917 the senior mistress of Bournemouth High School For Girls stood up in front of the assembled sixth form and announced to her hushed audience: "I have come to tell you a terrible fact. Only one out of ten of you girls can ever hope to marry. This is not a guess of mine. It is a statistical fact"... Lack of men meant looks were at a premium... other women sought solace among their own sex - with an explosion of lesbian relationships... The writer Esther Harding noted that more and more women seemed to be adopting "a somewhat masculinised dress and manner, as well as certain masculine characteristics"... the article suggests women might consider emigrating to find a husband. The sex psychologist Walter Gallichan - a popular voice of the day - urged single women to check the local population statistics when deciding where to go husband-hunting: Sussex and Leicester, he pointed out, were particularly unpromising areas to look for spare men, as they already had a disproportion of married men or surplus women... The stigma of being a spinster was so fearful that many women succumbed to sex, believing they'd get a husband that way. So much so that after the war some wag suggested fixing a plaque to the wall of a famous London hotel, "To the women who fell here during the Great War""

WHY ARE MORE BOYS BORN DURING WAR? EVIDENCE FROM GERMANY AT MID CENTRUY - "Several causes have been suggested (but not tested) in the literature. Many of these causes are proximate in nature, reflecting behavioral responses to the dramatically changed marriage market conditions for women and men that were induced by war-related declines in adult sex ratios... war-induced shortfalls of men significantly increased the percentage of boys among newborns."

Women really are worse at parking says Driving Standards Agency - "The Driving Standards Agency has revealed that ladies are twice as likely as men to fail their driving test for terrible reversing... Overall, there were 942,000 serious or dangerous errors of various sorts by women which left them unable to throw away their L plates and 718,000 by men... Men, on the other hand, lived up to their ‘boy racer’ stereotype by failing their tests more than women for speeding, failing to obey signs and traffic lights... Researchers at the Ruhr University Bochum, in Germany, who asked 65 volunteers to park a £23,000 Audi, found that women took up to 20 seconds longer. Some women have blamed the problem on the fact their breasts make it more difficult to turn around while parking... the pass rate for men remains 6 per cent higher than for women. Female drivers need an average 52 hours of tuition to pass but men speed through in just 36 hours of lessons"
The data seems to be mixed

Man Arrested for Playing Aoi Sora Porn on City Screen - "The man responsible, an employee of one of the nearby stores, was reportedly later arrested. He had apparently been using the PC powering the display to enjoy watching the video himself."

Is Sexual Orientation a Matter of Choice? - "Ninety women in lesbian and heterosexual couples were compared on relationship values, views of same-gender and cross-gender intimate relationships, and perceived choice of sexual orientation... The majority in both groups described their relationships with women as more emotionally and intellectually intimate than those with men. A majority of women in lesbian couples (58%) and a third of women in heterosexual couples reported choosing the orientation of their current sexual relationship... many women with female partners characterized lesbian relationships as more intimate and equal, and less gender-role stereotyped, frequently citing these characteristics, along with sexual attraction, as reasons for their relationship preference"

'The Truth Is, It Doesn't Work' - CD Projekt On DRM - "Like all GOG.com games, the version of The Witcher 2 released in 2011 shipped without DRM – pirating it would have been little more complex than sharing the file. However, it was also published in the US as a boxed, on-disc game by Atari. This version shipped with SecuROM copy protection. “Most people in the gaming industry were convinced that the first version of the game to be pirated would be the GOG version (as it was DRM-free), while in the end it was the retail version, which shipped with DRM”... perhaps the fun of file sharing – especially when done for status and bragging rights rather than serious financial gain – is in frustrating efforts by content owners to stop it. Within two hours of its release the DRM was cracked. Meanwhile, GOG.com’s DRM-free version hid in plain sight, too tempting and easy a target... Lest we forget – and I never get tired of this fact – the RIAA, in its case against LimeWire, originally estimated the losses caused by file sharers using the service as up to $75 trillion – that is, more money than exists in the world"

Topless New York: Exhibit, Calendar, and Book by Topless New York — Kickstarter - "So for the past twenty years, it has been completely legal all over New York State for a woman to be topless in any public place where men can be topless. Although few people are aware of this, I have been photographing women topless in public all over the state for the past few years in an effort to raise awareness, celebrate New York's recognition of top-free equality in a tasteful and hopefully artistic manner, and promote similar thinking for the vast majority of states where it is still illegal for a woman to be topless in public."
They wouldn't have failed miserably if they'd been more liberal about giving out photos to backers

Feminists freak out over LEGO Friends - "This blog sheds light on their omissions, skewed facts & images... 'I was never a Legos kid... I didn’t like all the assembly required'"
"As a female, I hate feminists. They always pull this kind of stupid crap and make this gender look so so bad."

The Quest For French Fry Supremacy Part 1 - "Our technique is basically Blanch, Dry, Fry, Fry. We are currently exploring these phases in excruciating detail in our search for the perfect fry"

I've been playing the same game of Civilization II for almost 10 years. This is the result. : gaming - "I've been playing the same game of Civ II for 10 years...
The world is a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation.
There are 3 remaining super nations in the year 3991 A.D, each competing for the scant resources left on the planet after dozens of nuclear wars have rendered vast swaths of the world uninhabitable wastelands."

How God lights up the brain - "our brains have evolved to respond to the presence of God as a real, concrete person, then many of those people struggling to believe in an abstract deity are working against their very natures. The evidence from this group in Denmark suggests that the more abstract the concept of God, the more unreal the experience is to the human brain."

Executive coach: 'Finance is an amoral world, bordering on the immoral' - "Those CEOs and managing directors at banks with their millions … They deserve our pity, really. They are the victims of their own twisted minds. And it will bring them down. Whether you are a paedophile or pervert or control freak or psychopath; sooner or later a twisted mind will turn on itself"

There Is No Invisible Hand - "One of the best-kept secrets in economics is that there is no case for the invisible hand. After more than a century trying to prove the opposite, economic theorists investigating the matter finally concluded in the 1970s that there is no reason to believe markets are led, as if by an invisible hand, to an optimal equilibrium — or any equilibrium at all. But the message never got through to their supposedly practical colleagues who so eagerly push advice about almost anything. Most never even heard what the theorists said, or else resolutely ignored it."

Karen Armstrong on the Jews - "Karen Armstrong… how shall I put this, has a tendency to sugar-coat the more problematic aspects of religious belief and practice... The feeling that things are too good to be true is a frequent experience when reading Armstrong’s writing on Islam. Not least, she seems determined to explain away anything that might show Muhammad in a bad light."

Happy Moments Caught on Security Cameras Around the World

Reply to What I heard was "anything more than a handful is wasted"... - "here are the three things my dad taught me:
1) Always aim for the side of the bowl. Never aim for the water. The noise is not polite.
2) More than a mouthful is a waste.
3) The worst shag you will ever have is the one you miss.
But I think, if you work hard at it, there might be correlation between mouthful and handful."