Links - 22nd October 2012

"The middle of the road is where the white line is-and that's the worst place to drive." - Robert Frost

***

Woman gets probation for stabbing female lover's boyfriend - "Gutted that her girlfriend left her for a man, a 29-year-old woman stabbed him in a fit of rage. Describing it a "crime of passion" in his sentencing, a district judge ordered Teo Ming Min to two years' probation... The court heard that Teo had bought the knife, with a blade measuring 14 centimeters, earlier that morning for "protection"... In his sentencing, District Judge Ng Peng Hong said that it was an "exceptional case which did not warrant a custodial sentence." But he chided Teo for her actions, noting that it resulted from "poor anger management skills, poor problem solving skills and poor regard of the law.""
I also want probation for stabbing someone

Feminists Have a Tantrum - "Judge Loretta A. Preska of the U.S. District Court in Manhattan tossed out this case in which some female employees accused financial and media services giant Bloomberg LP of workplace discrimination because their bosses failed to pretend that pregnant employees and those who took time off for maternity or other purposes were really doing the same work as those who worked faithfully fulltime on the job. This is another example of the fact that the feminist goal was never equal pay for equal work, but always was more pay for less work. Referring to the way the women's case was based on a few anecdotes and not statistics, the judge wrote, "'J'accuse!' is not enough in court. Evidence is required"... as Judge Preska wrote, "The law does not mandate 'work-life balance.'" It's OK for the employer to value employees who give ultimate dedication to their job, "however unhealthy that may be for family life." Anybody who went to work for Bloomberg LP should have known that the company "explicitly makes all-out dedication its expectation." Furthermore, Wall Street is a naturally aggressive and hypercompetitive 24/7 culture... Judge Preska quoted Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric, as saying: "There's no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences""
Addendum: "The judge found that women who went on maternity leave actually received higher increases in compensation – $5,789 in the year after they took leave - than those who took leaves for other reasons – $3,946."
So in other words they benefited from positive discrimination

Straightening Out the Work-Life Balance - NYTimes.com - "“Parents are a special class, and they get special treatment”... the pursuit of “work-life balance,” which sounds so wholesome and reasonable, can be a zero-sum game in the office... Some employees have come to expect that the demands of their children, in particular, will be accommodated — and not all of their colleagues are happy about it... sometimes there is no substitute for office face time... when she worked on a case with a more senior lawyer who had a part-time schedule because she had several children, Megan ran the whole case. “She swooped in at the last minute and took all the credit”... Who, if anyone, has the work-life balance higher ground: The mother with three children, the son taking care of elderly parents, or the 20-something who is learning Mandarin once a week? And should the reasons even matter and be brought to the table in the first place?... “No good flexibility policy ever put in place was for parents only.” But even well-designed policies cannot always accommodate the reality that many industries are deadline-driven or not particularly conducive to balance"

Infrared LEDs make you invisible to CCTV cameras

Pakistani mullah 'planted charred texts' on girl accused of blasphemy - "Chishti has been outspoken about his dislike of the hundreds of Christian families who live in the area, even appearing on a popular national television show to complain that the noise made by Christian worshippers had disturbed Muslim residents. He also welcomed the departure of most of the Christians from the area following the furore surrounding the arrest of Rimsha last month. With passions running high in the community – hundreds of people demonstrated outside her house, reportedly demanding the right to burn the young girl to death – most Christians fled the area."

Creationists and dinosaurs: Answers in Genesis teams with dissident scientists to deny feathered dino fossil record

Why you don't get taxis in Singapore when it rains? - "the company owning most of the island's taxis would withhold S$1,000 (about US$800) from a driver's salary immediately after an accident until it was determined who was at fault. The process could take months, and the drivers had independently decided that it simply wasn't worth the risk of having their livelihood tangled up in bureaucracy for that long. So when it started raining, they simply pulled over and waited out the storm. This unexpected revelation, a direct result of the data study, stunned the company."

New York priest says child often seducer in sex abuse cases

New rules for civil servants « Bertha Harian - "a. Do not go for business lunches. Eat in the staff canteen. And return your tray.
b. Don’t play golf. You don’t know which business contact you might meet.
d. If you do need sex, go to a prostitute. Remember to pay her. And check her IC
f. Re-screen your Facebook friends. Unfriend those who have any business with you.
h. Don’t invite relatives who are businessmen for Chinese New Year. This is to avoid you having to receive their oranges.
i. Does your work have anything to do with procurement? Ask for a transfer.
j. Ditch your Brompton bike."

Staffing woes 'put survival of smaller firms at risk' - "The firm that makes fitness and wellness products received 30 responses to its job advertisement but only 10 were Singaporeans and just two agreed to an interview. One was not suitable, while the other did not turn up. "She was still sleeping 30 minutes before our meeting," Dynaforce founder and chairman Jimmie Lee told The Straits Times. That left Mr Lee no choice but to get a foreigner even though he had hoped all along to hire a local. Dynaforce is not alone in facing staffing woes. Companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), are finding it harder to hire Singaporeans."

Tom Cruise abandoning Scientology? - "Tom has had failed marriages with Katie, Mimi Rogers and Nicole Kidman and also experienced a high-profile split from ex-girlfriend Penélope Cruz. The thespian evidently attributes his relationship breakdowns to his affiliation with Scientology."

Switzerland's 'Dementiaville' designed to mirror the past - "The newly approved €20m (£17m) housing project is to be built next to the Swiss village of Wiedlisbach near Bern and will provide sheltered accommodation and care for 150 elderly dementia patients in 23 purpose-built 1950s-style houses. The homes will be deliberately designed to recreate the atmosphere of times past. The scheme's promoters said there will be no closed doors and residents will be free to move about. To reinforce an atmosphere of normality, the carers will dress as gardeners, hairdressers and shop assistants. The only catch is that Wiedlisbach's inhabitants will not be allowed to leave the village"

Africa's pirates have demands - and letterhead, too - "Welcome to the Pirate Action Group. Pirate commander Jamal wishes to congratulate you on being hijacked. Kindly speak to his negotiator about your ransom, bearing in mind that his demands are similar for every vessel he seizes. This is not an absurd joke -- this is how the pirates of the African coast do business"

National Gallery puts on a peep show with Mark Wallinger's nude Diana - "Wallinger's installation takes as its defining image the moment, thrillingly described by Ovid and dramatically depicted in Titian's Diana and Actaeon, when the hunter Actaeon accidentally stumbles upon the chaste goddess Diana by her bath. Her vengeance is grim: she turns him into a stag, who is consumed by his own hunting dogs – a grisly scene painted by Titian in The Death of Actaeon. "The myth of Diana and Actaeon is the ultimate fable about voyeurism," said Wallinger. "There is an extraordinary savagery with which Actaeon is dispatched and given a deadly metamorphosis. My purpose was to make that contemporary in the context of Titian and the National Gallery. This building, after all, is all about the history of the male gaze and the female nude.""

Pelosi 'Swears' Spirit of Susan B. Anthony Spoke to Her in White House

Randy Lee Tenley Killed While Trying To Create Bigfoot Sighting

Three-person civil union sparks controversy in Brazil

Anna Amemiya - A Half-Human, Half-Anime Model - "What sets Anna Amemiya apart from any other model in the world is her signature anime head. She basically has the head of a smiling anime girl and the body of a real woman, which apparently (for some strange reason) appeals to some Japanese men. It’s important to note that Anna never takes off her mask, so nobody knows what she really looks like."

Dance studio offers children pole dancing classes

Cathay Pacific Angry About Video Portraying Business Class Flyers As Perverts

'Three-parent baby' fertility technique could be made legal - "Comparing the ethical debate with the birth of Louise Brown, the first IVF baby, in 1978, she added that many people had expected the child to be a "monster" and seen conception outside the womb as "absolutely appalling", but that IVF has since become commonplace."

Time Malaysian cabbies play by the rules - "many city folk strongly believe that taxi drivers have fleeced them for far too long. From refusing to go to certain destinations or use the meter to taking circuitous routes to get from one point to another, these are horror stories of taxi drivers shared by many regular commuters... in a recent ranking of the worst taxi drivers worldwide by LondonCabs.co.uk, the cabbies of Kuala Lumpur made it right at the top of the list... Heng speaks and writes Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and English but is also able to speak like a BBC newscaster if she wants to... When Heng came back from the assignment, she had nothing positive to report as she related her experience to us. She was practically a victim of “daylight robbery” as almost all the drivers believed she was a foreigner with her Caucasian look and British accent."
Malaysia Boleh!