Dead Girl Seeks Meaningful Relationships

Another reason not to watch Singaporean TV

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"Singapore Government is the best."

via Singapore Government Is The Best! (新加坡政府是最好的！）

Irate Student Mistakes Suitor's Sperm for Moisturiser

China: Irate Student Mistakes Suitor's Sperm for Moisturiser

A Chinese student, who mistook a bottle of sperm for moisturiser, has pressed charges against the would-be Romeo who gave it to her.

Zeng Lin, 19, had rubbed half the fluid into her face before noticing the smell. Her suspicions were confirmed when her flatmate said that it was semen, police said.

Besotted Gou Wen, 22, said that he had hoped to declare his love with the bizarre gift, the Sun reports.

He said: "I love her so much but she didn't know it and I didn't know how to tell her.

"So I did that thinking it was the ultimate way to show love."

Gou was forced to pay his victim £200 in compensation and has apologised.

Despite the setback the young man from Chongqing is still determined to win over his crush.

"Now I know I was wrong, but I will find another way to show it," he said.

50 tips for Backpackers travelling to China

"The four most overrated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics" - Christopher Hitchens

***

From EDMW:

"1.不要接近峨眉山的和尚。（烧香就是烧钱）
2.不要接近崂山的道士。（要求捐的香火钱数目不小）
3.不要买九寨沟的牦牛肉。（牛肉卖出天价，好多是马肉）
4.不要买三峡船上的玉器珠宝。（因为买过后多不知为何种材质）
5.不要在西双版纳参加“抢亲”游戏。（洞房就是“陷阱”）
6.不要在西安的古玩一条街购买古物。（多以假乱真）
7.不要在大理购买所谓“老乡”的便宜珠宝。（假货居多）
8.不要在阳朔的酒吧里消费。（结账时会发现价格高得惊人）
9.不要招惹泰山景区的当地人。（山上山下好汉多）
10.不要参观少林寺时走“捷径”
11.不要逛十三陵“***”玉石店。（品质参差不齐）
12.不要单独去海南旅游
13.不要在坝上草原骑马。（骑马容易下马难）
14.不要在吐鲁番买葡萄。（贵得离谱）
15.不要在深圳中英街购买任何物品。（多山寨）
16.不要参加北京当地的长城一日游。（很多都是只到水关，而非八达岭）
17.不要在张家界住便宜小旅店。（安全得不到保障）
18.不要在井冈山为“老区建设”捐款。（骗局，流进个人腰包）
19.不要在杭州的娱乐场所消费。（结账账单会让你目瞪口呆）
20.不要在苏州的茶楼喝茶。（茶昂贵、糕点无味）
21.不要在丰都鬼城照“免费”像。（天下没有白吃的午餐）
22.不要在北海乘坐摩托艇。（摩托艇宰客纠纷多）
23.不要在北戴河吃海鲜。（活的海鲜多被偷梁换柱）
24.不要在三亚海边接近小商贩。（强买强卖）
25.不要随导游在呼伦贝尔草原上吃烤全羊。（要价高）
26.不要在庐山乘个体出租车上山。（若有价格纠纷没保障）
27.不要在黄山市黟县宏村的路上坐出租车。（不跳表）
28.不要去黄山让人“免费带路” 。（会极力鼓动你参加旅行团或推荐你住宾馆）
29.不要在千岛湖码头的排挡吃鱼。（味道确很一般）
30.不要参观乐山大佛景区周边的付费景点。（乐山大佛老远就看得见，没必要花冤枉钱）
31.不要在郑州黄河游览区骑马。
32.不要到恒山算命
33.不要随旅游团环游青海湖
34.不要买神农架的土特产
35.不要在敦煌的夜市吃地摊饭
36.不要在花果山的海鲜一条街吃饭
37.不要随导游逛清明上河图
38.不要在南京做“免费美容”(先做一半，另一半要钱)
39.不要在上海滩让人给你照数码像
40.不要买“便宜票”看黄果树大瀑布
41.不要随导游在香港买名表和珠宝
42.不要投大钱在澳门赌博(有去无回，血本无归)
43.不要在威海韩国城购买没经狠杀价的商品
44.不要在丽江洗桑拿浴
45.不要到五台山的五爷庙烧香
46.不要在平遥摸“鱼洗”
47.不要在武夷山景区买茶叶
48.不要在白洋淀景区买鸭蛋
49.不要在乌镇让道士“免费看相”（多以消灾为幌子）
50.不要去太阳岛坐“热心人”介绍的船 （付两倍的船钱也看不到岛）

Its been 12yrs since i first take my backpack and travel to China alone.."

Turns out this list is all over China forums (About 55,100 Google results)


Someone: Summarised into 1 rule

1。不要去中国

Translation: "Don't go to China"


The thread is full of people complaining about China and complaining everyone is trying to rip you off.

So it's not just me!


Attempted translation from Yours Truly:

"1.Don't approach monks from Mt Emei (burning incense is burning money)
2. Do not approach taxis from Laoshan (in Qingdao, Shandong) (the incense money asked in donations is a lot)
3. Do not buy Jiuzhaigou Yak Meat (Beef that's sold for a heavenly life, much of it horse meat)
4. Do not buy jade treasures onboard the Three Gorges Cruise (because after the purchase you don't know what material they're made of)
5. Do not, at Xishuangbanna (in Yunnan), take part in the "chasing kin" game (the bridal is a "trap")
6. Do not, at Xi'an's Guan street, buy antiques (lots of fakes are mixed with the real goods)
7. Do not, at Dali's wholesale centre, buy supposed "old hometown" baubles (they're mostly fakes)
8. Do not, at Yangshuo's bars, waste your money (when you pay the bill you will find that the bill is shocking)
9. Do not provoke the natives of the Taishan area (there are many people on and at the foot of the mountain)
10. Do not look at Shaolin Monastery's "shortcuts"
11. Do not visit the 13 Ming Tombs' "***" jade shop (goods are of uneven quality)
12. Do not go to Hainan Island alone for a holiday
13. Do not ride horses on the steppes (it's easy to mount the horse but hard to dismount)
14. Do not, at Turpan (in Xinjiang), buy grapes (the prices are out of this world)
15. Do not, in Shenzhen's English Street, buy anything (they're mostly Shanzhai pirated knockoff products)
16. Do not go on daytrips to the Great Wall in Beijing (many only go to Shuiguan and not Badaling)
17. Do not, at Zhangjiajie (Hunan), stay in cheap hotels (they are not safe)
18. Do not, at the Jinggang mountains (Jiangxi/Hunan), give to "old quarter restoration" funds (it's a scam and it just enriches them)
19. Do not, at Hangzhou's recreation centre, waste money (the bill will stupefy you)
20. Do not, at Suzhou's tea houses, drink tea (it's expensive and the cakes are tasteless)
21. Do not, at Fengdu Ghost City, take a "free" picture (there's no such thing as a free lunch)
22. Do not, in the Southern Sea, take motorised boats (there are lots of [fee] disputes)
23. Do not, at Beidaihe (Qinhuangdao, Hebei), eat seafood (the live seafood is switched [?])
24. Do not, at Sanya (Hainan), approach peddlers (they were force you to buy their wares)
25. Do not, on guided tours to the Hulun Buir Grassland (Mongolia) eat a whole roast goat (it's expensive)
26. Do not, at Lushan (Jiangxi), get your own taxi to go up the mountain (those with price disputes don't have assurance [?])
27. Do not, on the roads of Huangshan City (Anhui), get on a taxi (they don't skip the list [?])
28. Do not, on Huangshan, let people "guide you for free" (they will strongly encourage to join a tour group or push a guesthouse on you)
29. Do not, along Qiandao Lake's (Hangzhou) jetties, eat fish from a stall (the taste is pedestrian)
30. Do not go see, around Leshan Giant Buddha (Sichuan), the paid attractions (Leshan's Giant Buddha can be seen from afar, don't waste money)
31. Do not, at Zhengzhou's (Henan) Yellow River Resort, ride horses.
32. Don't go to Hengshan for fortune telling
33. Don't follow a tour to Qinghai Lake (Qinghai)
34. Don't buy Shennongjia's (Hubei) local specialities
35. Do not, at Dunhuang's (Gansu) night market, eat 地摊饭 (Ditanfan - a type of rice)
36. Do not eat at Huaguoshan's (Jiangsu) seafood street
37. Do not follow a guide to see Along the River During the Qingming Festival
38. Do not, in Nanjing, go for a "free beauty treatment" (they do the first half for free then ask for money for the second half)
39. Do not, on the Bund in Shanghai, let people take your photos digitally
40. Do not buy "cheap tickets" to see Huangguoshu Waterfall
41. Do not follow a guide in Hong Kong to buy branded watches and treasures
42. Do not spend large sums of money in Macao's casinos (once you go you're done for)
43. Do not, in Weihai's Little Korea, buy anything without ruthless bargaining
44. Do not, at Lijiang (Yunnan), go to a sauna
45. Do not, at Wutaishan, burn incense at Wu Ye temple
46. Do not, in Ping Yao, touch the "fish washing" (Ed: I tried to find out what this was: most of the most relevant Google Images were of young girls. After that it was mostly pictures of fish)
47. Do not, at Wuyishan (Fujian), buy tea leaves
48. Do not, at Baiyangdian (Hebei), buy duck eggs
49. Do not, at Wuzhen (Zhejiang) let the Taoist priest "tell your fortune for free" (they will try and ward off evil luck [for money])
50. Do not, at Taiyangdao (Heilongjiang), let "friendly people" introduce boats to you (you will pay twice as much and not see the island)"

La Voie du Calinour

via Way of the Tiger:

"Voilà ce qui arrive quand j'ai un peu de temps à tuer, que c'est vendredi et que je suis fatigué. :P
Version Calinours de : https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151422576668898&set=a.10151346694793898.500327.169720893897&type=1&theater
avec l'accord de Megara Entertainment"

Links - 7th March 2013

"People with insufficient personalities adore cats. These people love being ignored." - Henry Morgan

***

Singapore is Boring (There, I said it.) - "I usually don’t believe in a place being “boring”. I’m more likely to blame the person being bored than their location. But I’m making an exception. Singapore is boring... So what do Singaporeans like about it? Aside from it being “home” where friends and family are, I’m not sure. I just read a blog post called, “Stuff I like about Singapore”, which you can find by googling “Stuff I Like About Singapore | Stuff Singaporeans Like” I don’t want to link it, cause a pingpack, and make the author mad, because she looks like a very nice girl. Her entire list consists of McDonald’s, air conditioning, the airport, the subway and hawker food. And somehow proves my point."

Affirmative Dissatisfaction - "Perhaps affirmative action is meant to help those who have historically been discriminated against. It would be hard to overlook women and Jews when considering historical punching bags. However, women and Jews are indeed overlooked in the affirmative action policies of most schools. Perhaps affirmative action attempts to help those groups heavily correlated with lower incomes. One of the strongest correlations with lower incomes is held by those with lower centers of gravity. As if short people didn’t have it bad enough: being refused at roller coasters, being unable to stand in the shallow end of pools, and now, being denied affirmative action. At least they don’t have to stand in the back for pictures. Finally, what about intellect? Perhaps our universities are in dire need of diversity of intelligence. Counter to most stereotypes, ugliness is highly correlated with poor intellectual performance by traditional measures, though I don’t know how many qualified applicants will be willing to put that down on their application. Race-based affirmative action attempts to target these groups: the discriminated against, the poor, and those with unique experiences and intellectual merits. However, affirmative action is fundamentally flawed because it uses race instead of targeting these groups themselves... Helping those with primarily low academic qualifications into primarily academic institutions makes as much sense as helping the visually impaired become pilots. How would you feel if you were assured before going into surgery that your surgeon was the beneficiary of affirmative action in medical school?... As Supreme Justice Clarence Thomas argued, employers will likely regard a minority candidate with greater skepticism if their alma mater engaged in affirmative action. This wouldn’t be racism—it would be simple logic—and that is what makes it all the more nefarious"

Wes Anderson's "Star Wars: Episode VII" Audition Tape

Gangnam Style: We need more foreign language pop songs. - "Thanks to After the Fire’s English version of "Der Kommissar" we know the song is about druggy underground folk, but we lose the swagger of Falco’s staccato German from the original. Others, from France’s Edith Piaf to Germany’s Rammstein, have had no problem attracting audiences who have no idea of what they’re singing about. With Piaf’s doleful delivery, do you need to know French to know the story of “Mon Dieu” is a sad one?... Are some languages more musical than others? It’s entirely subjective, of course, but linguistic phonetician Doug Honorof says languages with a lot of vowels have an advantage"

Team Coco Video FAQ @ TeamCoco.com - "I live outside the USA -- why can I watch some clips on TeamCoco.com, but not others?
It's those pesky legal restrictions again; they limit how many clips per day can be available in certain countries. On TeamCoco.com, look for the availability indicators immediately below the video player on the left side...
Yeah, we know, those limitations are intensely annoying! If you're in Canada, your best bet is to watch CONAN on CTV.ca. If you're in Australia, Ireland, or another country where Team Coco clips are blocked, your best bet is to burn an entertainment lawyer in effigy."

The Physics Of: Clown Cars

Boy, 3, fined £1,500 for weeing in garden

Man arrested for flashing breast implants

vintage everyday: Old Colour Photos of Japan in 1886 by Adolfo Farsari

Racists Stereotypes in school textbooks during the 1980s - "The textbooks “went to considerable lengths to portray the life and work of Mohammed the Malay hotel porter, Cik Alimah the Malay domestic worker, Ahmad the Malay street sweeper, Encik Samad, another Malay street sweeper, and by contrast, Mrs Li and Miss Li the Chinese school teachers” (165) “It also taught children to expect that Malays and Indians would work predominately in relatively menial jobs. Thus we see the Sikh policeman (Mr Singh), the Indian hawker stall holder, and the Indian and the Malay zookeepers (Muthu, Maniam and Hassan). On the other hand we see rather more uplifting images of Chinese characters, such as the civic-minded Chinese leader on the housing estate (Mr. Lin) and the Chinese doctor” (165)."
According to MCCY, "In 1980, only 7.2% of Malays wereholding administrative and managerial,professional, and technical related jobs." In the same year, 16% of Malay GCE O Level Students obtained 5 O Level Passes, versus 34% for Indians and 44% for Chinese.
Would people complain if all drug addicts, criminals and generally negative characters were Chinese?

Mythbusters: Does God Exist? - YouTube

Growth not just a question of finance, say experts - "Finance drives growth, but too much of a good thing sucks the lifeblood, brains and brilliant ideas from an economy, according to “startling” findings at the Bank for International Settlements. And advanced economies are overweight and even obese with financial services. “Finance, literally bids rocket scientists away from the satellite industry,” BIS economists warned, saying that it competes for people with high qualifications as well as for buildings and equipment. “The result is that people who might have become scientists, who in another age dreamt of curing cancer or flying to Mars, today dream of becoming hedge fund managers”... “with finance you can have too much of a good thing,” they said. “At low levels, an increase in the size of the financial sector accelerates growth of productivity.” But “there comes a point - one that many advanced economies passed long ago - where more banking and more credit are associated with lower growth.” Their analysis showed that when private credit grew to a point greater than gross domestic product, “it becomes a drag on productivity growth“. Also, when the financial sector accounted for more than 3.5% of total employment, further development of finance tended to damage economic growth. The two economists, writing in a personal capacity, have even come up with a cut-off or turning point at which the size of the financial sector does more harm than good: when the number of people in finance exceeds 3.9% of all people in employment... The economists came up with a second “quite striking” discovery: “The faster the financial sector grows, the slower the economy as a whole grows.”"

"MythBusters" cannonball rips through house, van

Attitudes toward Sex Are Changing - "Only 12 percent held the traditional double standard where they’d look down on promiscuous women but not men. And 13 percent said they’d lose respect for men and not women... The trend seems to be driven by women. Fifty-four percent of the women subjects judged genders equally, but only 35 percent of males did"
Not only does the so-called sexual double standard (SDS) not exist right now (if it ever did), the double standard is *against* men, not women. Not that people will be convinced...

How illicit sex can save a marriage - "Sometime they can ruin marriages, but if you take the view that most of them blow over and a good marriage is still a good marriage, we should be a bit more laid back about them like the French, Italians and Spanish"

'Street Fighter x Mega Man' released for free - "Singaporean fan Seow Zong Hui had approached Capcom reps with his Street Fighter x Mega Man game, and staff at the video game company soon realized that the project not only was of extremely high quality, but could coincide with the 25th anniversaries of both series."

Argentine woman marries twin sister's killer - "The father was disconsolate. "For me, they are both dead. Johana is with God and Edith with the devil," said Mr Valentin Casas."

The Oatmeal Sucks, Even if Buzzfeed Was Wrong - "the subject matter for Oatmeal comics is even less interesting than the subject matter for those spammy infographics. His most popular comics (one of which is the atheism comic he cited as an reflecting an "unpopular opinion") mostly concern animals, grammar mistakes, and minor annoyances relating to the tech world (printers, Apple products, customer service, working from home — topics that have gone uncovered by comedians for too long). One is quite literally an internet-style infauxgraphic: "15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee."

The Infauxgraphic Epidemic - "there’s a strong groundswell of designers taking it upon themselves to create data visualizations that at first blush appear to be legitimate but upon further review simply reveal nothing more than the designer’s desire to impress you with their ability to create splashy graphics that include data in some way. I recently spoke up on a lengthy Flickr comment thread on an image posted by another designer who is fed up with the noise being produced in the name of infographics, and it’s on this thread that I posited the term “infauxgraphics” to describe the latest spate of work that purports to display data in a meaningful way but eschews the key points of data visualization."

A grim reminder that children are often... - Up With Chris - " From 2008 to 2009, the number of preschool-aged children killed by guns was nearly double the number of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty"

Cards Against Humanity - "Unlike most of the party games you've played before, Cards Against Humanity is as despicable and awkward as you and your friends.
The game is simple. Each round, one player asks a question from a Black Card, and everyone else answers with their funniest White Card."

Dear Prudence: My wife doesn’t want sex, so I visit prostitutes. - "Young couples with mismatched libidos, please consider this testimony of how physical frustration can kill affection. What a terrible dynamic you two have always had, with your wife constantly swatting you away like a mosquito. But you went ahead and married someone who you knew wouldn’t meet your sexual needs. From her perspective she probably feels you’re pretty lucky"

Why Men die earlier than Women

On the claim that "a majority of X are peace-loving"

"I used to know a man whose family were German aristocracy prior to World War Two. They owned a number of large industries and estates. I asked him how many German people were true Nazis, and the answer he gave has stuck with me and guided my attitude toward fanaticism ever since.

“Very few people were true Nazis” he said, “but, many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories”...

The hard, quantifiable fact is the peaceful majority, the 'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.

Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority was irrelevant.. China 's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

And who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'...

Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts--the fanatics who threaten our way of life.?"

Imagining Discrimination

Evidence that at least sometimes,
- people "are just imagining it";
- that if you encourage a victim mentality people will perceive themselves as more discriminated against;
- that people are prejudiced against people who are thought to be prejudiced;
- that people might blame others for discriminating against them to feel better about themselves;
- and that all this screws the lives of the "victims" up:

"Feldman Barrett (1996; Feldman Barrett & and Fong, 1996) proposed an elaboration of the Lazarus and Folkman model, drawing on signal detection theory (SDT) to explain variations in the primary appraisal process. Although it was originally used as a model for understanding perceptual errors (misses and false alarms) in judging psychophysical signals, SDT has been applied to judgments in many psychological domains. Feldman Barrett and Fong (1996) argued that there are different psychological and interpersonal costs associated with misses and false alarms when applied to appraisals of threat. They suggest that people weigh the psychological costs of each type of error when making threat appraisals, thereby providing a motivational explanation for people’s judgment strategies...

SDT’s most significant theoretical contribution to understanding the judgment process lies in its ability to separate an observer’s actual judgment behavior into two subprocesses: sensitivity and response style or bias (Harvey, 1992). Sensitivity has been defined as an observer’s ability to accurately detect sensory information when it is present and its absence when it is not present. A target’s sensitivity to prejudice would reflect her or his ability to accurately detect the presence or absence of cues indicating prejudice and discrimination. Sensitivity may vary because people differ in their perceptual abilities or because of the properties of the stimulus. A stimulus’ probability of occurrence, intensity, and imminence (i.e., proximity to danger) will affect its ambiguity, and therefore a perceiver’s sensitivity (McNicol, 1972; Miller, 1979; Paterson & Neufeld. 1987).

In contrast to sensitivity, response style or bias is defined as the observer’s tendency to favor one response over another, independent of the base rate for the stimulus. Thus, a response bias for prejudice exists when an individual judges a situation or person as prejudiced or discriminatory more or less frequently than prejudice or discrimination objectively occurs in that environment. Response bias (i.e., the placement of an observer’s decision criteria) is influenced by two factors: the observer’s beliefs about the base rates of the stimuli; and the goals that she or he has when making a judgment about a stimulus (Egan, 1975; Green & Swets. 1966; 1974; 1-lealy & Kubovy, 1978), in particular, the perceived severity and consequences of a miss or false alarm (Feldman Barreu & Fong, 1996). There is no requirement that individuals are consciously aware of their response biases, and in fact they may function outside the observer’s awareness (Harvey, 1992)...

The notion of judgment outcomes can be applied to perceptions of prejudice and discrimination. For example, an African American individual may be in a situation where he or she is barred from entering a store that is about to close, but he or she notices that the manager allows a European American to enter. In this scenario, sensitivity is indicated by whether or not the African American individual notices the incongruence at all; response bias is indicated by how the person interprets the incongruence. A person with a stringent decision criterion may not judge the event to be discriminatory. A person with a more lenient decision criterion, however, will be more likely to perceive the event as discriminatory. The extent to which a person has a stringent or lenient decision criterion (response bias) is likely to be a function of many things, including his or her previous experience with prejudice in that environment (i.e., the perceived base-rates), and his or her need to be self-protective versus accurate (i.e., the goal associated with making the judgment). The goal associated with making the judgment is strongly linked to the perceived cost of making a judgment error (i.e.. the cost of a miss versus the cost of a false alarm)...

A third party observer who is independent of the target and the store manager can be used to determine the presence or absence of the stimulus criterion. This third party observer is not necessarily “objective.” but is independent of the victim—perpetrator system. Although the third party observer may have motivations that influence where he or she sets the stimulus criterion, they are not the same motivations a.s those of the perceiver (which constitute bias). Thus, the actual absence or presence of the stimulus cue is decided by an external source; it is ambiguous and probabilistic, but the relativity is taken out of the hands of the perceiver/target, and this allows us to distinguish between the decision criterion, which is bias, and the stimulus criterion, which is not...

Failure to change a decision criteria in response to new base rates for threat can occur for three reasons. First, individuals using a zero-miss strategy may fail to calibrate to the base rates of the larger environmental context because of behavioral restriction. Avoiding certain situations of people is one way to avoid a miss. Such avoidance also prevents individuals from encountering discomfirming evidence, however, and that in turn contributes to maintaining the use of a zero-miss strategy.

Second, individuals using either a zero-miss or a positive illusion strategy may fail to detect changes in their environment because of cognitive biases. Previous experience will produce cognitive structures that direct attention to information that is consistent with the formative environment and lifter out that which is inconsistent. An individual will develop cognitive structures that facilitate or inhibit threat detection, associated with expectancy that either most, or few, experiences have the potential to be dangerous or harmful. In either case. the individual develops well-entrenched assumptions about how to interpret ambiguous stimuli (Ittlesone & Kilpatrick, 1951) and will be chronically prepared to deal with ambiguous events (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982) in a way that matches their formative environment. Previous research suggests that implicitly held expectancies mediate the large effects of context on recognition, and exert their greatest influence on the interpretation of ambiguous stimuli (Epstein & Roupenian, 1970). Expectancies that have developed over a lifetime of previous experience not only have a profound effect on judgments, but they are usually inaccessible to conscious knowledge or intention, function automatically and effortlessly, and essentially constitute a dispositional preparedness for detecting threat (Ittlesone & Kilpatrick, 1951: Kahnemafl & Tversky. 1982: Posner, 1978). As a result, the individual may not be consciously aware that he or she has been trained to detect or avoid threat and may have limited sensitivity to the increase or decrease in threat cues in a new or changed environment. In addition, decision rules are typically learned deductively (Einhorn. 1982) and are used without intention or awareness (Lewicki, Kill, & Sasaki, 1989). These decision rules structure the encoding of ambiguous infonnation such that it will be seen as confirming evidence and thereby strengthen the further use of the rule (Kahneman & Tversky. 1982). As a result, confirmatory biases will lead people to try to verify, rather than falsify, their working hypotheses about the world.

Third, individuals using either strategy may fail to calibrate to a change in environmental conditions for emotional reasons. Threat appraisals may constitute an aversive learning context that has intense emotional consequences for judgment errors. If individuals modify their learned judgment strategy in any way, they will encounter more errors of the type that they have learned to avoid. Not only will the individual suffer the full consequences of the current judgment error, but he or she will have to tolerate the emotional arousal associated with an error; the individual may even recall or even re-experience similar previous situations where he or she suffered in some way by making the error. Thus, the error will likely have a strong emotional currency because in the formative environment, it was psychologically structurally, or physically costly . Because judgment errors will be emotionally disruptive to the individual, they may retain strong reinforce ment power and may subsequently reinforce the readoption of the original appraisal strategy.

This theoretical framework suggests the critical role that previous experiences can play in affecting the judgment strategies that individuals use to determine whether or not they have been a target of prejudice or discrimination...

Ruggiero and colleagues (Ruggiero & Major, 1997; Ruggiero & Taylor, 1995, 1997) have conducted several studies testing the impact of base rates on attributing (or not attributing) negative evaluations to prejudice. In these studies, participants first completed a test of their abilities. They were then told that their tests would be graded by one of eight outgroup members (e.g., males for female participants). Participants were also told that of these eight people, either all (100%), 6 (75%), 4 (50%), 2 (25%). or none (0%), were known to discriminate against members of the participant’s group. After a delay period, participants received a failing grade on the test, making them ineligible for a lottery. Finally, participants completed dependent measures that included a rating of the extent to which they attributed the grade they received to discrimination. Consistent with the prediction that prejudice is likely to be perceived when the probability of occurrence is high, participants were most likely to judge negative feedback as prejudicial when 100% of the evaluators discriminated against their group. Similarly, a base rate of 90% led individuals to more frequent judgments of discrimination than did lower base rates (Ruggiero & Taylor, 1995). Interestingly, the relationship between probability of occurrence and judgments of prejudice was not linear, because attributions to discrimination did not differ when the base rates were 75%, 50%, 25%. and 0%. The one exception to this finding was for European American men, whose attributions to discrimination decreased in a stepwise fashion from the 100% to the 0% conditions (Ruggiero & Major, 1997). Findings from all four groups suggest that probability of occurrence does affect attributions to discrimination. The absence of complete reliance on base rates. however, suggests that other factors (i.e., response biases) were also influencing attributions...

People are more likely to identify an event that has occurred to someone else as sexual harassment when the event had negative repercussions for the target than when the same event had no repercussions (York. 1989). Additionally, the presence of positive as well as negative outcomes could reduce the perceived intensity of the negative outcomes and thereby reduce the judgments of prejudice. For instance, the positive aspects of benevolent forms of discrimination such as paternalism (Glick & Fiske, 1995; VandenBerghe. 1967) may make it difficult for people to recognize this type of differential treatment as indicative of prejudice (Swim, Cohen, Hyers, Fitzgerald. & Bylsma, 1997)...

People have beliefs about who is prejudiced against whom. These beliefs (like stereotypes) can be defined as perceived base rates or perceptions of the probability that certain people will be prejudiced (Locksley, Borgida, Brekke, & Hepburn, 1980; McCauley & Stilt, 1978). For example, participants are more likely to label a male (versus a female) instigator as sexist, even when instigators engaged in identical behavior (Baron. Burgess, & Kao, 1991, Inman & Baron. 1996). Similarly, European American instigators are labeled as racist more often than are African American instigators, even when they engaged in identical behavior (Inman & Baron, 1996).

Behaviors are likely to vary in the extent to which they are perceived to represent prejudice against one’s group (Swim. Cohen, & Hyers, this volume). Differences in judgments of what constitutes a prototypic prejudicial behavior could explain why Blacks (primarily of West Indian heritage) were more likely than East Asians to indicate that a low grade was a result of discrimination (Ruggiero and Taylor, 1997). Even though both the East Asian and Black participants underutilized base-rate information, the Black participants were more likely to do this than the East Asian participants. Ruggiero and Taylor (1997) suggest that this group difference might be the result of differences in the tendency to make internal attributions for the low grade. An alternative explanation, however, is that negative evaluations in academic contexts are less prototypic for Asian students than for Black students. Hence, the Black participants may have believed that low academic scores are a prototypical cue of prejudicial treatment more so than did the Asian participants...

People have beliefs about the extent to which they or members of their social group have experienced prejudice and discrimination. The available evidence suggests that some of these beliefs influence attributions to prejudice. In the previously described study by Ruggiero and Taylor (1996). women were asked to indicate the extent to which they themselves, and women in North America, had experienced discrimination from men. The first question represents participants’ perceived base rates for their own personal experiences with discrimination, and the latter represents their perceived base rates for women in general. Ruggiero & Taylor (1996) found that perceptions of personal experience with discrimination were associated with attributing a failing grade to discrimination. Similarly, African American teenagers who believed that they were more likely to be personally discriminated against were also more likely to indicate that scenarios describing prototypical incidents of discrimination were indicative of discrimination (Taylor, Ruggiero, & Louis, 1996). Unlike beliefs about personal encounters with prejudice. however, beliefs about the tendency for one’s group to experience discrimination were not predictive of women’s or African Americans’ judgments (see Taylor et al., 1996, for a possible explanation for the difference in predictive power for the two types of base rates)...

The social psychological literature is replete with references to the ways that goals can influence judgments about other people (Fiske & Taylor. 1991). Judgments of prejudice and discrimination are no different. When we judge a person to be prejudicial, we are using stereotype information about who is likely to be prejudiced against whom. Therefore, past research on cognitive and motivational factors influencing the use of stereotypes (e.g., Brewer. 1996; Neuberg & Fiske, 1987) is likely to inform us about how goals of accuracy and self-protection influence the types of judgment strategies that people use when making appraisals of prejudice and discrimination...

Early research on reactions to discrimination indicated that after receiving negative feedback from a male evaluator, women who did not identify the evaluators as prejudiced had lower global self-esteem than women who did make this attribution (Dion, 1975, 1986). Results consistent with these conclusions have been found for the impact of negative evaluations on African, Jewish, and Asian Americans (Dion. 1986; Dion, Earn, & Yec, 1978; Miller, Boye, & Gerard. 1968 as cited in Dion et al., 1978)...

In the late 1960s, Grier and Cobbs (1968) proposed that African Americans have a “healthy cultural paranoia.” Following this characterization, researchers have examined the tendency for African Americans to distrust and be suspicious of European Americans (Terrell & Tenell, 1981; Thompson, Nevjlle, Weathers, Poston, & Atkinson, 1990). This distrust (or “racism reaction”) is thought to stem from feelings of threat from European Americans (Thompson et al., 1990). While the distrust may be justifiable. the disruption that results from mistrust can hinder the formation of specific relationships, even when there is primary importance placed en the relationship between two individuals. For example, African American individuals who have high mistrust levels are more likely to expect their European American counselors to be less accepting, trustworthy, credible, satisfactory, and more likely to expect less help with general anxiety, shyness, inferiority feelings, and dating difficulties (Nickerson, Helms, & Terrell. 1994; Watkins & Terrell. 1988; Watkins, Terrell, Miller. & Terrell, 1989). Cultural mistrust can also affect the counseling process by affecting the amount of disclosure during a counseling session (Thompson. Worthington. & Atkinson. 1994), possibly leading to self-fulfilling prophecy combined with a confirmatory bias. These findings from the counseling literature may also apply to other forms of interactions (e.g.. Kleck & Strenta, 1980). For example, research indicates that stigmatized individuals’ expectations about how others will treat them can lead them to perceive unfavorable treatment even when none is given (Kieck & Strenta, 1980).

Second, false alarms can be associated with behavioral restriction. One way to manage the perceived presence of prejudice is to structure one’s life to decrease the likelihood of encountering it (Swim et al., this volume). While complete avoidance is unattainable for the most part (Simpson & Yinger. 1985), targets can make choices about when (or when not) to enter particular situations or interactions. For instance, women (and not men ) are likely to prefer to change groups and gender composition of groups when they anticipate being the solo member of their gender in the group and this preference is related to women’s perception that they will he treated stereotypically (Cohen and Swim. 1995). Similarly, distrust of European Americans may lead African Americans to terminate employment (Terrell & Terrell, 1981) and prematurely terminate counseling with European American counselors (Terrell & Terrell, 1984). Also, reduced numbers of African American applicants to jobs has been attributed to a desire to avoid the rejection and interpersonal stress that results from prejudice from European American employers (Pettigrew & Martin. 1987).

The behavioral restriction that results from such avoidance has costs (Stangor & Sechrist, this volume). Descriptive research from counseling psychology illustrates that avoidance has potential costs for African Americans (Pinderhughes, 1982). Past experience with misdiagnoses by clinicians and intrusiveness of social service workers has lead many African American families to avoid seeking mental health services. As Biafora, Warheit, Zimmerman, Apospori, and Taylor (1993) note. “While racial mistrust may provide an adaptive coping mechanism for some individuals, it could also be hypothesized that mistrust may be maladaptive for others in that it may motivate them to withdraw from activities that are essential if they are to access the opportunity and reward structures of the dominant society—for example, school completion and/or seeking employment” (p. 894).

Third, false alarms are associated with anxiety (Mathews & MacLeod, 1994). If targets of prejudice believe that they are going to be evaluated in terms of their social group rather than on their own merits, anxiety may result and interfere with their performance (see Steele & Aronson, 1995; Aronson, Quinn, & Spencer, this volume). For example, women can be distracted when they are solo members of their gender in a group, and this interferes with their work even when they are not treated differently from other group members (Lord & Saenz. 1985; Sacnz, 1984): this occurs particularly when women are socially worried and believe they are being scrutinized (Lord, Saenz, & Godfrey, 1987). Thus, the anxiety associated with anticipating a threat can interfere with task performance...

Behavioral restriction means that people are less likely to enter situations where their beliefs will be discomfirmed. As Pettigrew and Martin (1987) note with regard to avoiding prejudice. “Avoidance learning reduces the possibility of experiencing corrective situations, such as acceptance and positive interaction” (p. 54).

Second, schematic processing, such as interpreting ambiguous information in line with one’s beliefs or focusing on confirming rather than disconfirming evidence. may make it difficult to change decision criteria. Confirmatory biases can decrease the likelihood that people will notice changes in the occurrence of prejudice and discrimination. For instance, stigmatized individuals believe that people will treat them unfavorably even when there is no evidence of negative behavior (Kleck & Strenta, 1980). In general, the research indicating that people tend to maintain their stereotypes, despite disconfirming evidence, suggests that people who hold stereotypes about perpetrators of prejudice will do the same (Baron et al., 1991; Inman & Baron, 1996; Rettew. Billman. & Davis. 1993).

Third, the emotional currency of encountering a miss or false alarm can make it difficult for people to stop using a positive illusion or zero-miss strategy, respectively... As Pettigrew and Martin (1987) note, “...because personal and vicarious experiences as a victim of prejudice and discrimination are highly emotional, this avoidance learning is deeply emotional—and emotional condition has an extremely slow extinction curve (Solomon. 1964). For these reasons, negative black responses to recruitment efforts are often especially resistant to change” (p. 54)."

--- Appraisals of Prejudice and Discrimination / Lisa Feldman Barrett, Janet K. Swim
in: Prejudice: The Target's Perspective


Addendum: See also - Discrimination: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

"the US is the most racist country in the world"

"This shop does not receive The Japanese, The Philippines, The Vietnamese, And dog"

Caption: "Racism with a nationalist twist. This sign is on the front door of a restaurant named "Beijing Snacks" or "百年卤煮" near Prince Gong's Mansions (恭王府) at Houhai Lake, a popular tourist spot just to the north of the Forbidden City in Beijing. I took this photo on February 22, 2013. Photo by Rose Tang. Copyright©Rose Tang. — at Houhai."

(The restaurant has since taken down the sign)


"The owner of the restaurant in Beijing’s Houhai neighborhood, surnamed Wang, told BBC News this week he didn’t care what others felt about the sign and that he had put it up out of “patriotism.”

“Chinese customers support me,” he said...

“The government of Vietnam should see their true colors through this fact that they let their own people do such things.”

He said the racism evident in the sign was similar to China’s “bullying” of its smaller neighbors in its foreign policy...

[Some] netizens in China... supported the restaurant owner’s action."

- Vietnamese Angry Over Beijing Restaurant Racism


"He said he was not sorry about having put it up.

"I don't have any regrets," he said. "I was just getting too many phone calls about it.""

- ‘Racist’ Beijing Restaurant Sign Taken Down


"“I didn’t bother to go inside the restaurant to interview anyone … I pretty much knew what the owner or whoever put up the sign would say and I’ve been fed up with such patriotic/racist rhetorics in China and didn’t want to hear more,” said Tang, a former journalism professor at Princeton University.

She was chased by protesters who showered her with rocks when she was covering the anti-NATO rallies outside the UK and US embassies in Beijing in 1999 as soon as they discovered she was reporting for a Hong Kong publication, Asiaweek magazine, the ex-reporter recalled.

“I think such national pride stems from a deep inferiority complex,” she added. “I hear all the time people raving about China’s rise, but ironically every Chinese family I know of is trying to send their children to America”...

Paul Mooney, a freelance reporter in Beijing, commented on one of Tang’s photos that “this is the government and Party’s fault. They tell lies about other countries and distort history and so Chinese who don’t know any better respond with ignorance. Very depressing.”"

- Beijing restaurant’s xenophobic sign ignites online fury


Someone: In other Asian nations [than Singapore], as I was told by a PRC woman once..."racism is commonsense".

Groovin' Chickens

"Jaak Panksepp, a psychologist in Ohio, recruited a flock of chickens for research purposes. He played various pieces of music to the birds and noted their reactions. Of all the musical delights sampled by the chickes, Pink Floyd's 'The Final Cut' brought the most notable response. The birds ruffled their feathers, shook their heads slowly from side to side and generally gave a strong impression of superannuated hippies at a Woodstock revival festival.

Panksepp concluded the the feather-ruffling was the avian equivalent of the musical 'chill' or 'tingle' experienced by people when they hear certain musical effects"

--- Mapping the Mind / Rita Carter, Christopher D. Frith


Steve Kotler’s West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief:

"This is important information since, from an evolutionary perspective, if spirituality really is biological, that biology should be found not just in human beings but lower orders as well."

Links - 5th March 2013

White House defends drone-war killing of Americans - "Obama campaigned in 2008 as a fierce critic of George W. Bush’s national security policies, notably interrogation practices widely seen as torture. He also left little doubt that he would order unilateral strikes inside another country if he deemed them necessary. In office, he has apparently learned to stop worrying and love executive power"

The Balancing Act of Being Female; Or, Why We Have So Many Clothes - "Once you’re “‘asking for it,” you could be a target. And, once you’re reached “prudish,” you’ve become socially irrelevant... Indeed, this is why women have so many clothes! We need an all-purpose black skirt that does old fashioned, another one to do proper, and a third to do flirty… at the very least… and all in casual, business, and formal. And we need heels to go with each (stilettos = provocative, high heels = flirty, low heels = proper, etc, plus we need flats for the picnics and beach weddings etc). And we need pants that are hemmed to the right length for each of these pairs of shoes. You can’t wear black shoes with navy pants, so you’ll need to double up on all these things if you want any variety in your wardrobe"
The idea of the virtuous mean is hardly unique to female hemlines

Being Ashamed of Drinking Prompts Relapse, Not Recovery, Study Finds - "The results add to a body of literature suggesting that widely used shaming and humiliating methods of treating alcohol and other drug problems — such as those seen on shows like Celebrity Rehab — are not only ineffective but also may be counterproductive."

Can Liberals Get a Witness? - "Churches are meddling in politics. Ministers are leading social movements, backing and attacking candidates, campaigning from the pulpit. That was the complaint in the 1950s and ’60s, when clergy pushed for civil rights legislation, nuclear disarmament, and withdrawal from Vietnam... The alienation of religion from the left is a problem for both sides. For the churches, it means losing young parishioners... The left should not be celebrating, however. Their separation from the churches means continuing estrangement from middle America. Part of the mythology of the left, rooted in the European experience, is that history is burying religion. Hardly; strong and widespread religiosity will be here in America for a long time"
If you claim to be for separation of church and state, you should be for separation of church and state even when it hurts causes you favour

"When subjects and their environments become one and the same"

Le paradoxe érotique de l'infirmière - "«Cette pratique professionnelle reste placée sous le signe d’une forte ambivalence entre l’image du dévouement, souvent rattaché à ses origines religieuses et qui renvoie à l’histoire de cette profession d’une part, et celle de la figure érotique, abondamment illustrée dans la culture populaire et dans la pornographie»... «Ces comportements sont expliqués tour à tour par les infirmières comme le symptôme d’un manque, par le fait que ces hommes veulent se prouver à eux-mêmes qu’ils sont encore des hommes malgré le cancer (affirmation d’une identité virile chancelante car mise à mal par la maladie et les traitements), et tentent ainsi de masquer leurs angoisses ou bien comme une volonté de se prouver que l’on est toujours séduisant», décryptent les auteurs... «Souvent, c’est plutôt des compliments gentils, très simples. Genre : "Ah ben, y’a que des top models dans cette équipe !"», explique P., 27 ans. «Ça détend. Ah oui, oui, ça détend et on en rigole»... L’humour est souvent la méthode utilisée pour dédramatiser et «désérotiser» la situation, sans la nier"

Modern art was CIA 'weapon' - "The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art - President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: "If that's art, then I'm a Hottentot." As for the artists themselves, many were ex- com- munists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing. Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete."

Future planning seems obvious – so why fight it? - "The fact that Vietnamese still shop per meal is widely noted and tends to be attributed to their love of fresh food. But it’s more than that – forward planning, or a lack of it, is a feature in all parts of work and life in Vietnam."

Time for a Truce in the Bragging Wars - NYTimes.com - "MOMMY BLOGGERS (and their daddy counterparts, too) agree about almost nothing. Some favor co-sleeping; others do not. Some favor banning video games; others do not. Similar disputes surround breast-feeding, vaccines, cursing and whether it’s O.K. to force-feed your child broccoli. But a rare consensus has emerged on at least one topic. What subject could possibly be so clear-cut it has elicited once-in-a-generation unanimity? That parents should stop bragging about their children... Another common piece of advice — each time you criticize someone, you should give multiple compliments — applies equally well in reverse. Each boast about a child should come surrounded by three negatives. My son is on the honor roll (but still wets his bed)... Everyone agrees that boasting to your own parents is not just acceptable, it’s desirable... Bragging about our children is a way of relieving our anxiety that we’re not total losers as parents. The opposite instinct, what we might call “reverse bragging” — “My kid’s more screwed up than yours”"

A short history of the death of culture (SMBC) - "The internet is killing culture! Nobody can write anymore!"

Religion As An Activity Engaged In By Consenting Adults In Private - "the authorities accused of violating the plaintiffs’ rights operate with a definition of religion as a private matter to be kept out of public space... there is a very ideological view of the place of religion in society. In other words, religion is to be an activity engaged in by consenting adults in private. The attorney for the Judeo-Christian side in the aforementioned American case had it quite right when he compared the treatment of his client’s religion with measures of disease control. This is not an attitude one would expect to find in a Western democracy. It is curiously reminiscent of policies toward religion in Communist countries and toward non-Muslims under Islamic rule"
If "religion is like a penis", then we shouldn't show it in public

Marvel Gets Taxes Lowered on Superhero Mutants - "Two attorneys have helped Marvel Entertainment lower import taxes on its action figures by arguing that superheroes like the X-Men are less like human dolls and more like nonhuman toys... The ruling includes information such as, “Dr. Doom's non-human characteristics include the appearance of metal upper and lower extremities and a metallic head. The creature's face is crisscrossed by rows of rivet marks. It has reinforced rectangles for eye openings, and an open mouth surrounded by rivet marks and blocked by bars, one horizontal and two vertical"
Mutants are humans too!!!

There's No Such Thing as Everlasting Love (According to Science) - "It is not a long-lasting, continually present emotion that sustains a marriage; it is not the yearning and passion that characterizes young love; and it is not the blood-tie of kinship. Rather, it is what she calls a "micro-moment of positivity resonance." She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day... With Valentine's Day around the corner, many Americans are facing a grim reality: They are love-starved. Rates of loneliness are on the rise as social supports are disintegrating. In 1985, when the General Social Survey polled Americans on the number of confidants they have in their lives, the most common response was three. In 2004, when the survey was given again, the most common response was zero... Part of Fredrickson's project is to lower cultural expectations about love—expectations that are so misguidedly high today that they have inflated love into something that it isn't, and into something that no sane person could actually experience.

Rand Paul Beyonce Obama: Seriously? GOP Demands Obama Resign After Beyonce’s Alleged Lip-Synching | Breaking News for Black America - "The New Yorker article NewsOne cited in the post below is, in fact, satire. We apologize for reporting the piece as fact"

Condoms Don’t Ruin Sex, Study Says - "American men and women rated sex as highly arousing and pleasurable regardless of whether condoms and/or lubricants were used"

Is the heat of combat in Iraq or Afghanistan any place for a woman? - "Baskerville concedes that “few” women would probably want to be part of the front-line infantry... Maj Judith Webb, the first woman to lead an all-male field force in the Army, has sounded an alarm that standards of fitness would deteriorate if the UK follows America’s lead. The former officer, who served in the 28th Signal Regiment in Germany and Cyprus, and left the Army in 1986, says she has been converted to the idea of women serving in the roles of drivers or medics on the front line after their success in Afghanistan and Iraq. But she argues that women are not up to the rigours of close-quarter combat"

Get 1 million Facebook 'Likes' for sex -- and a puppy

So Long, Fellow Travelers - ""lesser evil" is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations... Not only does the "peace" movement ignore the anti-Saddam civilian opposition, it sends missions to console the Ba'athists in their isolation, and speaks of the invader of Kuwait and Iran and the butcher of Kurdistan as if he were the victim and George W. Bush the aggressor... The meaningless demagogy of the peaceniks can only be explained by a masochistic refusal to admit that our own civil society has any merit, or by a nostalgia for Stalinism that I can sometimes actually taste as well as smell... As someone who has done a good deal of marching and public speaking about Vietnam, Chile, South Africa, Palestine and East Timor in his time (and would do it all again), I can only hint at how much I despise a Left that thinks of Osama bin Laden as a slightly misguided anti-imperialist... Or a Left that can think of Milosevic and Saddam as victims"

Twitter / TwistedSifter: The 'Michaelangelo' Squirrel ...

The Sock Gap - YouTube - "No self-respecting woman will ever let a naked man in socks do the squelchie with her"

Worst License Plate Ever

"PMS 666"

Always do research before choosing a movie

''C'est si bon!'' - Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai NEXT

Le feu rouge vu par les autres

(via @Yakarouler_com)

Marital Coercion

A History of Marital Coercion |

"In 2003 Chris Huhne allegedly forced his then wife, Vicky Pryce, to lie to police that she had been driving the family car when it was caught speeding by a traffic camera instead of him. Her defence, and one that is available to any criminal charge, with the exception of treason or murder, and only available to women, is that of Marital Coercion pursuant to section 47 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925...

It could be argued that a defence that only applies to women could be seen as sexist. Are women incapable of coercing men? Are women so meek that they are still regarded as being subservient to men, particularly their husbands? Do they require greater protection from their spouses than their husbands do from them?...

In its current form the law on marital coercion would only apply to lesbian couples and not gay male couples."


I had a quick look on the open web and not unexpectedly it seems feminists are largely silent on this law (the top results were mostly people questioning their silence).

One quasi-exception (Maritla Coercion doesn't seem to be a defence in the US) is Anne Coughlin:


"Anne Coughlin's areas of expertise are criminal law and feminist jurisprudence. At first glance, they seem an odd combination. Criminal law is a field dominated by men. Substantive criminal law punishes and deters wrongdoing committed overwhelmingly by men against men, and criminal procedure regulates traditionally male police officers as they try to identify and capture male offenders. Feminist jurisprudence, by contrast, is dominated by women. Feminist academics seek to expose the cultural mechanisms that have subordinated women's experiences, interests, and perspectives to those of men. Perhaps since so few criminals are female, feminist legal scholars have tended to confine their attention to a few corners of the criminal law, such as rape and domestic violence, Where men traditionally have victimized women. Of course, no one disputes the importance of these issues, but Coughlin does doubt the wisdom of focusing on the harms suffered by female crime victims. The risk, she fears, is that feminists might inadvertently promote victimhood as the exclusive role of women, with the parts of villain and hero reserved for men.

Coughlin began to think about the unintended consequences of feminist reform as a criminal defense lawyer in Washington, D.C. ln researching a case, she encountered the very stringent conditions traditionally required for the defense of duress. Generally speaking, the defense only applies if a person commits a crime when someone is holding a gun to his head. The law has insisted on this grudging definition of duress not only to preserve the deterrent impact of the threat of criminal punishment, but also to endorse and maintain a vision of individual accountability. By attributing an individual’s conduct to his own choices and discounting the effect of outside pressures, we validate and respect individual autonomy. Those whose criminal acts the law does excuse-think, for example, of infants and the insane-the law also seeks to control. The insistence on individual accountability for one’s choices, even when made under great pressure, serves to maintain individual autonomy and independence from state supervision...

Coughlin also noticed the widespread support for a new excuse from criminal liability, an excuse that in practice applied only to women. The so­-called “battered woman syndrome” was increasingly invoked to avoid criminal punishment for women who killed their abusive male partners. At a time when most feminists applauded this development, Coughlin saw there a disquieting remnant of the misogynist assumption that women lack the capacity for responsible self­governance. Everyone agrees that the responsible course of action would be to leave the abusive male long before resorting to homicide, but the battered woman syndrome posits that women are too dysfunctional to perceive or pursue that responsible option. In Coughlìn’s view, by suggesting that women suffer from psychological deficits that render them incapable of resisting pressures exerted by men, the battered woman syndrome defense explicitly locates women’s subjugation, not within legal or cultural convention, but within women themselves. On that assumption, Coughlin reasoned, women would continue to be vulnerable to forms of state intervention and supervision from
which autonomous and responsible men would be immune...

Coughlin argued against special excuses that privilege masculine over feminine traits even as they extend protection to women. At the same time, she called for taking the sympathetic intuitions that support the battered woman syndrome defense into account in a revised theory of criminal responsibility, one that can accommodate women’s experience of domestic violence without judging them to be deviant and inferior, indeed, creatures more like animals than men"

--- At the Intersection of Criminal Law and Feminist Jurisprudence (Virginia Journal 1999)


Unsurprisingly she approaches it from the angle of the defence undermining women (instead of men being disadvantaged by their not being able to use the defence), but at least one can take comfort in the fact that the two are really two sides of the same coin: if in inter-gender relations only men can be villains, women are simultaneously disempowered.

This principle of agency and empowerment also applies in other areas where feminists give women a free pass.

BKK 2012 - Day 1, Part 3 - Chinatown

BKK 2012
Day 1, Part 3 - 7th September - Chinatown


White Pink Elephants


I thought it was a fashion faux pas to wear the same thing as another woman

I stopped for a snack:


Mystery Meat


I had one from the left and one from the right (B10). The one on the right was pork and on the left was pork or chicken wrapped with a huge amount of fat.


12B mystery drink. I thought it was chin chow (grass jelly) as it was very black but it was probably black coffee or liang teh (it was hard to tell, and it was very sweet)


Mango salad I knocked from 30B to 25B. The mango seemed too ripe - I could taste the mango

I wanted to visit the temple complex south of the palace but it was drizzling, I was tired and the light was fading (Bangkok is an hour behind Singapore despite the longitude being similar).


Stupa from boat (ferry down the river)


Pagoda from boat


"All you need is love". And lots of money, naturally.

Dinner was at a Teochew restaurant in Chinatown (Tang Jai Yuu), but I had to get there first. I hailed a taxi marked "taxi meter" but the guy refused to use the meter, claiming there was traffic. I was tempted to walk 1.7km but I didn't have data for my GPS and the map from the hotel was not detailed enough. A tout outside quoted me 300B but even 200B was exorbitant. In any event I had a headache so I just let myself be swindled; the taxi ride was less than 10 minutes in the end. Later it was pointed out to me that I should've had the hotel flag the taxi for me.


"Clean Food Good Taste"
With a Bodhisattva, too.


Coconuts and mystery green drink.


Cheap Shark's Fin!


"Fried Tasteful Variety Meats" = Fried Leftovers


"Fried Iceberg"


"Fastfood
Four Kinds of Hors d'Oeuvres"
I'm not sure why baked rice is "fast food".


Hei Zou (prawn rolls)
This was different from the Hei Zou I was used to, in having more prawn in the mix (I ould feel the prawn)


Crab Meat Fried Rice
Both this and the hei zou came like 5 minutes after our order. They were not kidding about fast food.
This ties with Long Beach for Best Fried Rice I've ever had.

Tasting the food, I saw why this was on CNNGO's list of the Best Teochew Restaurants in Bangkok.


Suckling Pig


30B Sprite (422ml). Tea/Chrysanthemum was 50B and so potentially cheaper. The 422ml glass bottle was a weird dimension (not to mention shape).


The ear was overrated, at least in the Suckling style. It wasn't crispy like the rest of the skin.


Rest of the pig


Yam


More pomegranate juice, and refreshing Thai orange


Cheap Bird's Nest. At a hawker style. No frills!


Cheap Shark's Fin


Chinatown


More Shark's Fin


Medicated oil (?)


Shark's Fin Emporium, I think


Homeless person


Chinese Goodies


Guan Yin model


Temple


Wat. With plane beacon at top.


Chinatown Gate


Durian Stands


Coolest purchase of the trip - these are the same 2 posters, viewed from different angles