Links - 17th April 2014

No sitting! Hong Kong trains to scrap seats for smartphone users - "Hong Kong is pondering whether to rip out some seats from overcrowded metro trains to give the city’s smartphone-addicted population more room to interact with their devices."

Trolls Just Want to Have Fun? - "trolls scored highly on a number of personality traits examined: Machiavellianism, psychopathy,narcissism, extraversion, disagreeableness and sadism."

Frozen - A Musical feat. Disney Princesses - YouTube I hate "strong female characters". The Princesses in this movie are much less interesting than the traditional Disney Princesses

Young people swap clothes with grandparents and parents for charming, fascinating photos [14 pics]

What’s the One Thing in Thailand Visible From Space? - Southeast Asia Real Time - WSJ

Police Arrest Man for Having Sex with Goat in Jigawa - "Kamisu was said to have admitted that the goat belonged to him and that he had asked the goat to have sexual intercourse with him but he was arrested by the village head of the area and handed over to the police... He regretted that if he knew that he would be arrested, he would have not tried it because it was the reason why he did not make love with women in the area. He said animals satisfied his demand, that is why he is not after women in the state just to avoid embarrassment but still he found himself ambushed by people in the area. He called on the court to do justice for him because he knows that what he did was an offence to a society and against the Islamic injunctions."

'Personalized Porn': Is Sex Becoming More Social?

Jell-O Covered Men Arrested For Filming Each Other Having Sex With Cow - "Michael Jones, 33, and Reid Fontaine, 31, were captured on film in flagrante delicto after a farmer set up hidden cameras in a bid to discover why his cows had suddenly stopped producing milk... As if being sexually abused by two Jell-O covered men wasn’t traumatic enough for the poor cow, it bolted when the TV cameras arrived and was hit by cars, leaving it dead in the road."

Egypt army criticized for claim of a device that cures AIDS - "According to the army, devices called C-Fast and I-Fast detect hepatitis C and the virus that causes AIDS through the use of electromagnetic waves. A patent filing with the World Intellectual Property Organization has already been made by the Egyptian Defense Ministry for C-Fast. The army also identified a device that treats both viruses, as well as psoriasis, called Complete Cure Device."

Tokyo fair showcases latest sex aids - "“Products that are safe and made with high quality materials, which can operate very quietly, are becoming the mainstream. They are also warranted for a year, just like home appliances.” Japanese sex aid maker Rends demonstrated its latest artificial vaginathe A10 Cyclone SA—a sleek cylinder, about 30 centimetres (12 inches) long, which can be remotely connected to a computer or a smart phone. The rotating barrel inside has seven different speeds, the company said, advertising it as a “sexual home appliance”. “Feel free to use at night when your family is sleeping, without worries,” it said."

Chinese state media outlet uses racial slur in editorial criticizing outgoing US ambassador - "The article called Gary Locke a "rotten banana," a guide dog for the blind, and a plague. It reflected Chinese nationalists' acute loathing toward the first Chinese-American to have been Washington's top envoy to Beijing... The editorial carried by China News belittled Locke's inability to speak his ancestral language and accused him of failing to understand China's law but fanning "evil winds" in Tibet and Xinjiang. "Banana" is a term for Asians identifying with Western values despite their skin color."

Where's the Asian in Asia's 50 Best Restaurants? - "Anywhere in the world, trying to rate restaurants relative to each other is going to be a prickly affair. So it didn't take long for feathers to be ruffled over David Thompson's topping the Asia's 50 Best Awards with his Bangkok restaurant Nahm earlier this week. "The no 1 restaurant in the 50 Best Asia list belongs to a white Australian guy? I quit the org(anisation) for good reasons," tweeted Jay Rayner, restaurant critic for the Observer in the United Kingdom and former UK chair of the World's 50 Best Restaurant Academy of voters... Yet a larger handful of chefs disagreed, dismissing the need to single out Asian chefs and Asian cuisine. "Good food doesn't discriminate by location or culture, a chef is a chef whether he is Chinese or cooking Italian food," says Gaggan Anand of third-ranked molecular Indian restaurant Gaggan in Bangkok. Local consultant chef Eric Teo adds: "The awards are titled Asia's 50 Best Restaurants, not Asia's 50 Best Chefs, so let's keep the chefs behind the scenes and judge based on the food." Furthermore, as Mr Teo points out, Singaporean chefs are topping culinary competitions in Europe, while Asian chefs such as David Chang and Nobu Matsuhisa have long made waves in the US. "People are naïve to say that a Westerner can't cook Thai food. David has spent all his life in Thailand, and his head chef is Thai," says The Tippling Club's Ryan Clift. "It's irrelevant and it touches on racism"... "Invariably it's the expatriates rather than the locals who are looking harder for the hole-in-the-wall eateries in each new country they move to," he elaborates. In a similar vein, having more Asians on the list doesn't mean you will get more Asian restaurants, with more Asians travelling widely, "and having fond memories of dining in Paris or London or anywhere in the world".

Lee Thé's answer to Why do some feminists hate evolutionary psychology? - Quora - "Doctrinaire feminism and sociobiology are incompatible concepts.Doctrinaire feminism is an ideology; sociobiology is a scientific discipline. Thus doctrinaire feminism is deductive–it derives its world map from ideas. While sociobiology is inductive–it derives its world map from reality, perceived via observation, experimentation, and mathematics. Doctrinaire feminism, like all ideologies, is descriptive, prescriptive and consequentialist–that is, the validity and worth of ideas are determined operationally, by whether they advance the cause of feminism, and to what degree they do. Sociobiology, like all scientific disciplines, is descriptive and predictive–the validity of ideas is determined empirically, with predictability, consistency, and mathematical rigor being the gold standards. Whether an idea advances or detracts from any cause has no bearing on whether it’s true or not. These are structural incompatibilities between all ideologies and all scientific disciplines"

When You're Mistakenly Angered by Man Nipples - "In Changsha, China, one shopper wasn't happy with the beautiful chests running on television screens in a shopping arcade.P The push-up bra ads were running in a public shopping area which has forty screens. In one part of the commercial, the announcer says, "Wow, even a man can wear this and have wonderful cleavage.""

San Francisco Sex Club Mission Control Sees Increase in Membership - "“If you’ve never tied (someone) up with an Ethernet cable,” Shannon once said, “you’re not geeky enough.”"

Lots of People Who Support Gay Marriage Think Gay Sex Is Immoral - "roughly a tenth of Americans don't like gay sex but think gay people should be able to get married anyway. In other words, they don't think public policy should necessarily mirror their private beliefs. A decade ago, this distinction between public and private was virtually non-existent. In 2003, 62 percent of Americans said gay marriage violated their religious beliefs, and roughly the same proportion (59 percent) believed that gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry. Fewer people believe that gay marriage violates their religious beliefs now, but of those who do still think that, some seem to have decided that their religious beliefs shouldn't determine who can get married... Nearly 70 percent of Millennials support same-sex marriage, but only 56 percent think gay sex is morally acceptable. That is pretty remarkable—young Americans are only slightly less skittish about it than the general population, 51 percent of which disapproves. But no matter what Millennials may think about gay sex, they've clearly decided to keep it to themselves"

South African scientists map HIV antibodies in vaccine hunt - "The outer covering of HIV has a coating of sugars that prevents antibodies from reaching the surface to neutralize the virus. In this patient, we found that her antibodies had 'long arms', which enabled them to reach through the sugar coat that protects HIV"

Diabetes Can Be Cured by Drugs That Mimic Gene Mutation

Vaccine education programs may not work as hoped - "Education campaigns that aim to inform people about the benefits of vaccines do little to increase the intent of parents to vaccinate their future children, according to a new study. Furthermore, researchers found that among a group of parents who were least likely to vaccinate their future children, some education campaigns actually added to their reservations."

Singapore named world's most expensive city: Economist Intelligence Unit - "Over the last decade a 40 percent currency appreciation, coupled with solid price inflation, has consistently pushed Singapore up the ranking. The city also has some structurally expensive items that skew the overall cost of living upwards. For example, car costs have very high related certificate of entitlement fees attached to them, which makes Singapore significantly more expensive than any other location when it comes to running a car. As a result, transport costs in Singapore are almost three times higher than in New York... As a city-state with very few natural resources to speak of, Singapore is reliant on other countries for energy and water supplies, making it the third most expensive destination for utility costs. The proliferation of expensive malls and boutiques on Orchard Road also make Singapore the priciest place in the world in which to buy clothes. Singapore's rise comes at the expense of Tokyo, traditionally the world's most expensive city, which has seen a slide in the valuation of the Yen, despite a return to inflation. The Japanese capital fell to joint 6th most expensive... Economic instability relating to the civil war and the collapse of the Syrian pound has placed Damascus among the world's cheapest cities, although local price inflation will have been impacted by supply issues."

PC overload? Ellen DeGeneres labeled 'transphobic' for Liza Minnelli joke - "Ellen DeGeneres, an openly gay talk-show host, has come under fire in the wake of a joke she made about Liza Minnelli at the Oscars on Sunday night, leading some to remark on a new, over-the-top level of political correctness in Hollywood... A source closely connected to the star – who is widely championed for her support of the LGBT community – assured us that Minnelli did not take offense. “Liza adores Ellen,” said the source. According to Dan Gainor, VP of Business and Culture at the Media Research Center, the upset over DeGeneres’s comments is just a case of the PC police going wild. “America has been bombarded by sudden PC rules involving the trans community. Even Oscar winner Jared Leto was criticized for playing a transgendered role in ‘Dallas Buyers Club.’ TIME magazine called it a ‘Mammy’ role and ‘dishonorable.’” he said. “Even a gay icon like Ellen now falls victim to their criticism. Gone is the concept of tolerance or even acceptance.”"
Cis-privilege!