Links - 23rd July 2012

"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god." - Jean Rostand

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Live Cis Excellence - "Tumblr trans people actually offend the fuck out of me. I struggled with gender dysphoric that contributed to awful depression all through middle school and freshman year, and, after going to therapy for a while, ultimately just decided to stay happy being what tumblers like to call "cis." Now I'm called scum and my opinions on gender are completely disregarded because "I could never understand what it's like." What?"

Why Attending Law School Is The Worst Career Decision You'll Ever Make - "only 55% of class of 2011 law school grads were employed full-time as lawyers nine months after graduation. The other 45% may be unemployed, working at Starbucks or starting their own law school hate blogs... 85% of law school grads are facing an average debt load of $98 500... And if you still think, despite the sad statistics, that law school holds up as a solid investment when compared to less practical fields of study, you might want to take a gander at the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project’s 2012 Annual Report. According to SNAAP’s survey of 36 000 creative arts grads, their unemployment rate is half that of the national average"

Dear Abby: How do Mary Matalin and James Carville stay married without homicide? - "Carville ran Democrat Bill Clinton's unlikely and ultimately successful presidential campaign in 1992 while Matalin ran the unsuccessful reelection campaign for George Bush I...
Carville: I would say the three ingredients to successful marriage is surrender, capitulation and retreat.
Matalin: Spoken like a true liberal."

The Not-So-Perfect Kilogram and Why the Metric System Might Be Screwed - "Why should we care whether a kilogram in a vault is “perfect” or not? Because it’s bad news when your standard is no longer standardized. While no one’s worried whether a single kilogram of apples is a hair lighter or heavier at the produce stand, a small discrepancy can become a gargantuan one if you’re dealing with, say, a whole tanker of wheat. The kilogram is also used as a building block in other measurements. The joule, for instance, is the amount of energy required to move a one-kilogram weight one meter. The candela, a measure of the brightness of light, is measured in joules per second. These links mean that if the kilogram is flawed, so are the joule and candela, which could eventually cause problems in an array of industries, particularly in technology. As microchips process more information at higher speeds, even tiny deviations will lead to catastrophes"

Actually, I don't like being called 'Ah Lian' - "Ms Huina, who declined to give her surname, was caught on video arguing with an older woman to whom she had given up a priority seat on a train heading towards Pasir Ris last Monday at about 6.30pm. After taking the seat, the older woman, who gave the impression that she was entitled to the seat, said of Ms Huina: "So displeasing. Most probably you're from China. Ask you for the seat, keep on staring for how many hours? So rude." Initially, she ignored the woman, but a heated argument then broke out, with both woman resorting to the use of profanity."
Asian Values! Old people are always right.

Jim Henson improvising on the set of The Muppet Movie was pure magic

Warning over medical implant attacks - "One attack identified a radio signal that, if re-broadcast, would have switched off a heart defibrillator... "We can influence any pump within a 300ft [91m] range," Mr Jack told the BBC. "We can make that pump dispense its entire 300 unit reservoir of insulin and we can do that without requiring its ID number""

Why We Laugh - ""Most laughter is not in response to jokes or humor," says Robert R. Provine, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Provine should know... humor and laughter are not inseparable. Provine did a survey of laughter in the wild -- he and some graduate students listened in on average conversations in public places and made notes. And in a survey of 1,200 "laugh episodes," he found that only 10%-20% of laughs were generated by anything resembling a joke. The other 80%-90% of comments that received a laugh were dull non-witticisms like, "I'll see you guys later" and "It was nice meeting you, too." So why the laughs? Provine argues it has to do with the evolutionary development of laughter. In humans, laughter predates speech by perhaps millions of years. Before our human ancestors could talk with each other, laughter was a simpler method of communication... the primary function of laughter may not be self-expression. Instead, the purpose of a laugh could be to trigger positive feelings in other people... in some people with underlying health conditions, occasionally, jokes can kill. For instance, some unlucky laughers have had heart attacks, strokes, and embolisms when cracking up. According to Provine, there is some historical evidence that tickling was used as a method of torture and execution in centuries past. In one reported and exceedingly bizarre technique, a victim was tied up and the soles of his feet were covered with salt. A goat was then brought in to lick the salt, causing intense tickling. If kept up for long enough, the stress and exertion of laughing -- and squirming -- could have eventually brought on cardiac arrest or a brain hemorrhage"

High Heels, Pelvic Floor, and Bad Science - "Wanting heels to be healthy (as she stated she does) skewed how she presented the material to the public. That’s a huge (HUGE!) no-no. Of course, the media picked up on her letter to the editor and didn’t follow up with reading the research portion"

Gabriel Seah's answer to What are some merits and criticisms of the Women's Charter in Singapore? - Quora - "Just by its name, it discursively privileges women. In other words because it's called the "Women's Charter" it benefits them (sometimes at the expense of men).
It doesn't cover Muslim marriages.
It outlaws gay marriage.
Husbands can be made to pay maintenance for their wives but not vice versa.
Marriages can be voided on grounds of non-consommation.
It does not criminalise prostitution.
Men above 21 who make a reasonable mistake about the age of a girl under 16 (the age of consent) still get nailed by the law if they have a "carnal connection" with her. In other words, even if she lies that she's 16 or above, or even shows false identification, the male is still liable."

★・カゴメ CM・AKB48・30秒 （2012年6月） - YouTube

Le parcours amoureux : Un jour, mon prince viendra ! - "Vous êtes sûre d'une chose : le reconnaitre entre mille ! Mais lui, vous verra-t-il seulement, au milieu de toutes vos compagnes d'infortune, qui le cherchent avec autant de conviction que vous ? Etes-vous la plus jolie, la plus aimable, la plus … ?"

Sheryl Sandberg's Full HBS Speech: Get On A Rocketship Whenever You Get The Chance - "When companies are growing quickly and they are having a lot of impact, careers take care of themselves... If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on... as you get more senior, not only will people speak less clearly to you but they will overreact to the small things you say... A good leader recognizes that most people won’t feel comfortable challenging authority, so it falls upon authority to encourage them to question... I try to speak really openly about the things I’m bad at, because that gives people permission to agree with me, which is a lot easier than pointing it out ijn the first place"
Rocket ships sound great - until they explode

The 'Busy' Trap - NYTimes.com - "Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs  who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence... She once ruefully summarized dating in New York: “Everyone’s too busy and everyone thinks they can do better”... The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment"

The liberal media’s war on 'trolling' is becoming increasingly intolerant and censorious - "The respectable media’s war against “trolling” continually mixes together prejudicial spite with political thinking, as if there is no difference between them. So feminist bloggers who rail against misogynistic trolling wring their hands over everything from threats of rape, which are very serious and potentially illegal, to ridicule of feminism, which is just a form of political criticism – often not very sophisticated criticism, but so what?... Feminism is a political ideology and thus must be open to criticism, even stinging, hurtful criticism. To compare ridicule of feminism with the threat to rape a female writer is a kind of censorious moral blackmail, where the aim is clearly to demonise critics of feminism by associating them with foul blokes who get off on writing emails about rape"

What Would Happen If Every Ad Looked Like an Apple Ad? - "What would happen if all the ad campaigns in the world were ran by Apple's ad agency? Exactly this. It's hilarious because 1) it's true and 2) it clearly shows how absurdly minimalist their ads are"

Baasha.flv - YouTube

Hi! I'm swinging. (NSFW)
imswinging.com. Brought to you by the people behind meatspin! Not quite as poetic though

Newsmakers 04/19/1993 | Archives | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle - "The former co-host of the ABC series "America's Funniest People," Arleen Sorkin, filed a lawsuit last week in California, claiming she was dropped from the show because she is white. Sorkin is seeking at least $450,000. According to the lawsuit, producer Vin Di Bona told Sorkin last year that her contract would not be renewed because "ABC, through its chairman, Dan Burke, had requested that he replace her with . . . a black or other ethnic minority." Vin Di Bona Productions had no comment, an employee said Friday. ABC, which was not named in the lawsuit, also declined to comment"
Post-racialism!

Minka (pornographic actress) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "Minka (born September 7, 1970) is the stage name of a Korean-American former pornographic actress and tennis player... Minka made a special guest appearance on the radio program LoveLine with Doctor Drew where she set up some of the show's favorite audio-drops; "Numba one Asian big boob queen!" and "Minka don't play tennis no more!" In 2009 she along with her team won the USTA National Championship in female amateur 4.5 tennis doubles held in Las Vegas"
Minka's most impressive accomplishment: with her gifts, she can still play tennis

Athletes spill details on dirty secrets in the Olympic Village - "On a United Airlines flight from Sydney to Los Angeles in 2000, nearly 100 Olympians were among the passengers, causing the flight attendants to begin the flight with a warning: "Ladies and gentlemen, anybody who wishes to sleep, trade seats with someone in the front of the plane. Everybody else to the back with the Olympians." After that, the story gets fuzzy."
"This year in London, the Olympic organizing committee is providing 150,000, using special dispensers which contain a message promoting sexual health. Averaged among 10,490 athletes, that’s enough condoms for every athlete to have sex 15 times over the Olympics’ three weeks—double that if, as some claim, they’re all having sex with each other."