Links - 19th August 2012

Advice for Young Girls From The Little Mermaid - YouTube
The whole series is good!; the fact that real girls don't actually believe these things (e.g. you should get animals to lick your plates) is ironically evidence against the monkey-see monkey-do theory of human behavior

Four Sisters Recreate Childhood Photos Taken Decades Ago

"Join Us Surely" by PwC Singapore - YouTube

あらま They Didn't ! Japanese Entertainment News - Detroit's Chou Anime Cafe Offers Japanese Treats, Companionship & Waitresses In Frilly Dresses - "I feel bad that people are giving them so much flack based on their race and body type. Like if anything judge them on how they present themselves and their service, not their appearance."
A maid cafe with a difference

The psychology of doping accusations: Which athletes raise the most suspicion? - "According to covariation theory, we form internal or external attributions for people’s actions based on the degrees of consensus, distinctiveness, and consistency in the behavior. Consensus is the extent to which other people would act similarly in the same situation, distinctiveness is the extent to which the target person behaves the same way in other situations, and consistency is the extent to which the target actor’s behavior is the same way every time the situation occurs."

In Israel, new modesty glasses for Orthodox Jewish men blur women out of their line of sight - "It’s the latest prescription for extreme ultra-Orthodox Jewish men who shun contact with the opposite sex: Glasses that blur their vision, so they don’t have to see women they consider to be immodestly dressed"
They should sell this in the Muslim world

Charles McCain: The "Greatest Generation" Is A Myth (Part 1 of 3) - "I have known, talked to, and interviewed dozens and dozens of World War Two vets and not one of them took the expression the “Greatest Generation" seriously. To a man they thought it was specious. A good friend of mine who fought on Okinawa said, "it's a bunch of bullshit. No one wanted to go. No one. We didn't feel called upon by history. We just got stuck with it and there was no choice. We had to do it.""

Charles McCain: The "Greatest Generation" Is A Myth (Part 2 of 3) - "Most veterans of World War Two never heard a shot fired in anger because they were in support units. It took at least 25 to 30 men to support each soldier in combat. And believe me, from deep reading into the subject, the majority of those men took care of themselves before they passed anything onto the combat soldiers. The memoirs of the combat troops are filled with invective against the rear echelon troops"

Charles McCain: The "Greatest Generation" Is A Myth (Part 3 of 3) - "US infantry typically scorned American tank units because they were often hesitant to advance. They had good reason: the standard American M4 Sherman tank could not stand up to German tanks or to the deadly German panzerfaust. Although the US Army learned this within a few days of the landings in Normandy, the nation with the ability to manufacture unlimited quantities of almost anything, failed to produce a battle worthy tank which could stand up to the Germans until the very end of the war. And that was simply a Sherman tank which was upgunned and had thicker armor added in the front."

The Myth called “the Greatest Generation” More like The Greatest Book Title. - "What I remember most about the GG was their hatred of Jews and Blacks, their tendency to believe that hitting their children was their “right.” The husband’s belief that wives were good if they could just stay in kitchen and perform in the bedroom. That’s what women were for in the GG. If a husband beat his wife, normally the police were not notified. And when they were, it was extremely unusual for a husband to be charged with assault. In their mind that wife was his property. To me, the Greatest Generation was angry, cowardly and socially inept"

Ikkousha is Ultimate Ramen Champion 2011 - "Ramen judge and writer of Japanese-language Ramen Freak magazine, Ishiyama Hayato, said via translator, "I am very impressed with the quality of ramen available here, I have interviews several ramen outlets in Japan and there is no difference in the quality and authenticity of the ramen available here in Singapore". Hayato, who has sampled ramen from more than 5,000 places and visits two ramen outlets a day, hopes that these characteristic bowls of noodles will be soon recognized as a world food"
Some people claim that it's impossible to find authentic food outside of its home/native/origin country

Researchers Create Picture Dictionary for Cities - Technology - "What gives your city its unique visual character? This may sound like a pretty subjective question, but researchers from Carnegie Mellon and a Parisian university are making it less so. They’ve developed visual data mining software to detect which features define a city’s look. For Paris, the team concluded that cast-iron balconies, windows with railings, special Parisian lampposts, and certain styles of doors make up the city's unique identity. For New York it's the fire escapes, and bay windows defined San Francisco, though the software had trouble picking up on elements in U.S. cities because of a relative lack of stylistic coherence compared to European cities"

A little wartime anecdote - "The granddad of @kixes told her what happened when news broke in Singapore of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945... the Japanese officers were very fair to them, they knew they were all listening to 'illegal' broadcasts but never turned them in. They just said 'not during my office hours'. So they listened in after office hours"

Samantha Brick: Scientists say honesty really IS the best policy - "It was two years ago that I first adopted an ‘honesty policy’ that has reduced many of my friends to tears, left some open-mouthed with shock, and others full of admiration... with my 40th birthday looming, I decided that enough was enough: all this niceness and tip-toeing around people was exhausting. From that point on, if I was asked for an honest opinion, then I would give it... According to researchers at the ­University of Notre Dame, an honesty policy can improve your physical and mental health. They found that those who told little white lies to spare the feelings of others found the experience stressful. Meanwhile, those who spoke the truth not only felt more relaxed, they also formed better relationships with those they were being straight with"

Meet Japan's Lady of Eternal Youth - "Ms Masako Mizutani, who turns 44 in September, says: "I joined the contest just for fun. I didn't think I'd make an impression because there were so many beautiful Japanese women"... "I didn't think it was really a big deal. It's a woman's duty to take care of herself"... "Everyone knows that I spend at least five hours on my beauty regime a day." Ms Mizutani feels that women, particularly those who marry and have children, tend to neglect their beauty regime after they hit their 30s. She says: "That should not be the case. If you don't love yourself, how do you expect to be loved?""

The Positive Power of Negative Thinking - NYTimes.com - "21 people were treated for burns after walking barefoot over hot coals as part of an event called Unleash the Power Within, starring the motivational speaker Tony Robbins... Mr. Robbins and his acolytes have little time for physics. To them, it’s all a matter of mind-set: cultivate the belief that success is guaranteed, and anything is possible... Consider the technique of positive visualization, a staple not only of Robbins-style seminars but also of corporate team-building retreats and business best sellers... visualizing a successful outcome, under certain conditions, can make people less likely to achieve it... Or take affirmations, those cheery slogans intended to lift the user’s mood by repeating them: “I am a lovable person!” “My life is filled with joy!” Psychologists at the University of Waterloo concluded that such statements make people with low self-esteem feel worse... Even goal setting, the ubiquitous motivational technique of managers everywhere, isn’t an undisputed boon. Fixating too vigorously on goals can distort an organization’s overall mission in a desperate effort to meet some overly narrow target, and research by several business-school professors suggests that employees consumed with goals are likelier to cut ethical corners... The Stoics recommended “the premeditation of evils,” or deliberately visualizing the worst-case scenario. This tends to reduce anxiety about the future: when you soberly picture how badly things could go in reality, you usually conclude that you could cope... Buddhist meditation, too, is arguably all about learning to resist the urge to think positively — to let emotions and sensations arise and pass, regardless of their content... the relentless cheer of positive thinking begins to seem less like an expression of joy and more like a stressful effort to stamp out any trace of negativity. Mr. Robbins’s trademark smile starts to resemble a rictus. A positive thinker can never relax, lest an awareness of sadness or failure creep in. And telling yourself that everything must work out is poor preparation for those times when they don’t. You can try, if you insist, to follow the famous self-help advice to eliminate the word “failure” from your vocabulary — but then you’ll just have an inadequate vocabulary when failure strikes"

. . .s h h h. - Interesting Fact About 千と千尋の神隠し - "I’ve noticed that several of my followers are Miyazaki fans, so I thought I share this little tidbit of information with you about Spirited Away... basically, they were brothels. Guess what the woman who ran this bath house would be called? ゆばば。Yubaba. (translates directly to “hot water old woman”) Yubaba is the name of the woman who runs the bath house in Spirited Away. If you watch Spirited Away in Japanese, the female workers are referred to as yuna... THEN I read interviews with Miyazaki. This was all put in intentionally. As we all know. Miyazaki’s stories are weaved with different themes and metaphors. He said he was tackling the issue of the sex industry rapidly growing in Japan, and that children being exposed to it at such early ages is a problem"

LBJ: The President Who Marked His Territory - "Once, he even relieved himself on a Secret Serviceman who was shielding him from public view. When the man looked horrified, Johnson simply said, “That’s all right, son. It’s my prerogative.” His favorite power ploy, however, seemed to be dragging people into the bathroom with him―forcing them to continue their conversations with the president as he used the toilet."

Stop Blaming “Stop At Two” - "Some of these comments essentially laid the entire blame of our modern problems on the “Stop At Two” policies of the 70s... From the hypothetical set of data, our last year where fertility rate is at or above replacement level would be 1984, and in 2010, our fertility rate would be at about 1.4, just slightly above Korea and Hong Kong - still a serious problem... In our parallel universe, Singapore’s fertility trend line would have matched Korea"