Links - 4th August 2012

"Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world." - Arthur Schopenhauer

***

Shanghai Subway Tells Scantily Clad Women To Expect Sexual Harassment - " Two young females, each wearing a black veil over their face, stepped into a crowded subway station with signs... instead of showing the expected support, netizens turned on these two females. @王若翰Kitty complains: “We can always get rid of perverts through law or moral regulation, but you can’t ask everyone to pretend to ignore you when you wear really revealing clothes! This is an impossibly high bar.” @快乐小陶子 had a more unique take: “ I think a woman who wears revealing clothes in public is actually sexually harassing the men there. Regardless of your gender, you should not use the hot weather as an excuse to dress indecently. Public places aren’t your locker room; regardless of your gender, if you want to be respected by others, you have to learn to respect other people first.”"
Comment: "If you're going to "make a statement", you're categorically inviting people to look at you, otherwise it's not a statement. You can't have it both ways...if you're going to dress like that, people are going to look. How much looking constitutes sexual harassment... does anyone else see the irony in deliberately attracting attention to your boobs (with a silver tin-can bra over your clothes, for example) to protest people looking at women's private parts?"
"I remember an incident at a university in the 70's when a young woman in the students canteen stood in line wearing a top with stratetically placed holes in it. A professor was seen to go a little closer and peering at the blouse whereupon the student, very annoyed, asked him what he thought he was doing. His reply: "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought that was the idea""
"public space is hardly the place to show sexual organs, primary or secondary, whether it is a woman's cleavage or a man's genitalia; if men started wearing no underwear and tight or see through pants, I bet women would denounce it as sexual harassment, and demand anti-erection devices; such hipocrisy. Leave the sexual display for the bedroom, the nightclub, or the beach, for spaces where it is expected"

Cellulite: The Phantom Menace - "most men (even fat ones) never develop it, because the connective tissue under men’s skin is crisscrossed like a net, which better restrains their fatty deposits. Women’s tissue bands are organized in vertical columns instead"

Cellulite: The Women's Disease That Doesn't Exist - "Cellulite was, quite literally, invented by fashion magazines. On April 15, 1969, Vogue magazine published an article describing cellulite as an increasingly common skin disease, and advertising solutions to "cure" this imagined problem. The term "cellulite" existed within a medical context, to describe the secondary sex characteristic, beginning in the 1920s, but practitioners did not regard it as a disease or a problem"

The UnMuseum - Real Dracula: Vlad the Impaler - "In a poll taken in Romaina in 2006, Vlad was named as one of the "100 Greatest Romanians" of all time"

Celibacy, Furniture and Ecstatic Dancing- What More Can you Ask For From a Religion? - "The Shakers were best known for their wholesale rejection of sexual relations and their intense work ethic, which they channeled towards making really great furniture. You have to sublimate that id somehow…. Unsurprisingly, the Shakers eventually died out for reasons that need not be mentioned. They left some great end tables though."

delanceyplace.com 7/23/12 - please and thank you - " saying "please" and "thank you" is not a universal custom—there are societies such as the Inuit, where it is not the case... etiquette largely consists of the exchange of polite fictions (to use less polite language, lies). When you ask someone to pass the salt, you are also giving them an order; by attaching the word 'please,' you are saying that it is not an order. But, in fact, it is."

What Does Space Smell Like?

New in Singapore: iPad rentals for tourists

14 Creative Divorce Cakes

The Grand Moofti Speaks: Charity, MUIS and being a Pakistani-Malay-Indian Singaporean - "I am not Malay by ethnicity. Nor do I speak Malay. In fact, under Singapore law persons of Pakistani origin are legally classified 'Indian,' requiring monthly mandatory payments to the Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA). I may voluntarily give zakat to MUIS but SINDA benefits from my legal classification. My Housing and Development Board ethnic quota is 'Others' (not Malay) but I am subject to Singapore's Islamic law (AMLA) – legislation designed to fit into Malay religious and cultural traditions. Being a cynic, I am convinced that were I ever to approach MUIS for assistance, I would politely be sent packing towards SINDA. I am not a Tamil Indian. Nor do I speak Tamil. Consequently, I will most likely face similar problems convincing SINDA to assist me, especially once SINDA realizes I am Muslim (not difficult given my name). I imagine there will be a few bouts of 'shuttle diplomacy' between SINDA and MUIS until a senior bureaucrat in some government ministry decides that being categorized Indian or Malay is not as important as being Singaporean, regardless of ethnicity."

The Grand Moofti Speaks: Singapore’s secularism – is there an opt-in clause for Muslims? - "the AMLA has several conditions which impinge on the civil rights of Muslim citizens. For example, a Muslim is unable to write a Will assigning more than 33% of his wealth to his preferred heirs. AMLA forbids it. Put another way, the law dictates that as a Muslim I cannot give 100% of my wealth to (say) my mother if I wished. I can only leave a maximum of 33% to my mother. Under Singapore law, the remaining 67% of my wealth must be distributed by MUIS (based on Islamic law). I find this odd legislation for a secular state... Choice is the bedrock of freedom within a secular society. Hindus exercise choice if they eat beef and Catholics if they use a condom. Similarly, Hindus exercise choice when not eating beef and Muslims when not drinking alcohol. Freedom of choice should prevail in all matters of personal conscience. Muslims deserve the same choices which other Singaporeans take for granted. One such (lack of) choice pertains to the law of inheritance. There are also other instances"

The Grand Moofti Speaks: Whither Singapore’s Secularism? Note to the Ministry of Law - "It should be noted that there are several main schools of law within the Sharia. In Pakistan, the orthodox school of law is different from the school to which Malays generally subscribe. Additionally, AMLA is geared towards Sunni Muslims. Shia Muslims may have their own grievances with AMLA. AMLA deals primarily with family law, including inheritance, marriage and divorce. Several provisions of AMLA contradict sections of Singapore civil law... AMLA permits polygamy and specifies guidelines for divorce. Polygamy blatantly contradicts the Singapore Women's Charter while the divorce guidelines are controversial. Feminists have issues reconciling AMLA with the Women's Charter"

Erika Christakis: Why Mass Killers Are Overwhelmingly Male - "How many of the worst mass murderers in American history were women? None... Imagine for a moment if a deadly disease disproportionately affected men. Not a disease like prostate cancer that can only affect men, but a condition prevalent in the general population that was vastly more likely to strike men. Violence is such a condition: men are nine to 10 times more likely to commit homicide and more likely to be its victims... For millennia, human society has struggled with what to do with young men’s violent tendencies. Many cultures stage elaborate initiation ceremonies, presided over by older men, which help channel youthful aggression into productive social roles... Our refusal to talk about violence as a public-health problem with known (or knowable) risk factors keeps us from helping the young men who are at most risk and, of course, their potential victims. When we view terrible events as random, we lose the ability to identify and treat potential problems, for example by finding better ways to intervene with young men during their vulnerable years"
When we refuse to acknowledge patterns in data because of a dogged refusal to 'stereotype', it is the disadvantaged groups which suffer the most

Help Keep Singapore Corruption Free. Join Us As A Graft Buster ! - "If you are infected by the zeal to fight corruption in Singapore, come and join us to pursue a challenging and rewarding career as a graft buster!"

Birth Control Matters for Women Who Want American Dream - "No one wants to suggest that certain women shouldn’t have babies. But the hard truth is that certain women shouldn’t have babies if they aspire to a middle-class life... Births to financially insecure single women who aspire to middle-class life are a hindrance to upward mobility... the more we put our heads in the sand about the comprehensive economic impact of unwed motherhood on working-class and middle-class families — including a thorough reckoning of its downstream financial costs to children’s and mothers’ physical, academic, psychological and social health — the more the void is filled by people who don’t have much intention of doing anything about it... Unfortunately, people on all sides of the political spectrum fall into the morality trap when they talk about unwed motherhood, tying themselves in knots trying to parse the “real” impact of growing up in an atypical family. On the right, these conversations often rooted in religious convictions about marriage, sex and even abortion. On the left, policymakers are so quick to embrace all family structures that they refuse to acknowledge that some models really do work better than others in the long run. On both sides, there’s an emotional quality to the discourse that detracts from the financial realities... We need to stop fighting about the ethics of out-of-wedlock births and instead focus on the economics behind them. When we do, we’ll discover that the real story isn’t that women aren’t getting married. It’s that they, and the men who impregnate them, are having children they can’t support. It may be good news that a majority of Americans (54%) think having a baby outside of marriage is morally acceptable, because for women under 30 today, the majority of births do take place outside of marriage. Whether it’s economically feasible is a whole different story"

How This Guy Lied His Way Into MSNBC, ABC News, The New York Times and More - "On Reuters, he became the poster child for “Generation Yikes.” On ABC News, he was one of a new breed of long-suffering insomniacs. At CBS, he made up an embarrassing office story, at MSNBC he pretended someone sneezed on him while working at Burger King. At Manitouboats.com, he offered helpful tips for winterizing your boat. The capstone came in the form of a New York Times piece on vinyl records — naturally, Holiday doesn’t collect vinyl records"

I want that MRT pervert punished - "As a short-term measure, she will be returning home only once a week. "For my safety, I've quit my job and got permission from my parents to move into my boyfriend's home," she said"