Links - 5th August 2014

1% Wives Are Helping Kill Feminism and Make the War on Women Possible - Elizabeth Wurtzel - The Atlantic - "Let's please be serious grown-ups: real feminists don't depend on men. Real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own... For anyone who doesn't care to count, but understands traffic signals mixed with policy speculation, I think it's safe to say that the day is near when a teenage girl will be forced to get a vaginal probe before she is issued a learner's permit in the state of Virginia... I have to admit that when I meet a woman who I know is a graduate of, say, Princeton -- one who has read The Second Sex and therefore ought to know better -- but is still a full-time wife, I feel betrayed... A job that anyone can have is not a job, it's a part of life, no matter how important people insist it is (all the insisting is itself overcompensation). Even moms with full-time jobs spend 86 percent as much time with their kids as unemployed mothers, so it is apparently taking up the time of about 14 percent of a paid position. And all the cultish glorification of home and hearth still leaves us in a world where most of the people paid to chef and chauffeur in the commercial world are men. Which is to say, something becomes a job when you are paid for it -- and until then, it's just a part of life"
If "not all feminists" are like this, they are certainly doing a great job at shaping the common perception of feminists as hysterical and oppressive
If being a parent is so easy, why complain that men don't pick up the load?

maybe genius: Strong Female Characters and Devaluing the Feminine - "Part of the push toward the Strong Female Character includes a push toward devaluing the feminine in favor of the masculine, even while keeping the ladies gorgeous and perfectly coifed. The characters I refer to are often the only valuable female character in a sea of male characters. They rarely interact with other women, let alone are good friends with any. Because other non-strong women are just so boring and useless, you know? They can't be bothered with normal female friendships and support. They're too busy proving that they're one of the guys."

Can secularism benefit Malay-Muslims? - "Secularism has been a dirty word for Malaysian Muslims largely because of the two legacies: the Kemalist legacy in Turkey and the British legacy in Malaya."

Economics and ethics: Lying commies | The Economist - "The authors found that, on average, those who had East German roots cheated twice as much as those who had grown up in West Germany under capitalism. They also looked at how much time people had spent in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The longer the participants had been exposed to socialism, the greater the likelihood that they would claim improbable numbers of high rolls."

Singapore Judge Says Reasons Needed to End Gay-Sex Ban - Bloomberg - "“What’s the legal criteria?” Andrew Phang asked lawyers for the three men who claim the law violates their rights to equality and to life and personal liberty under the Asian city state’s constitution. “The court can only listen to one voice, the legal voice,” the judge said yesterday... “Maybe this is not the right forum to canvass these arguments,” Phang said. “Maybe it’s across the road to parliament.” The court is being asked to venture into policy formulation on an “intensely controversial area” with emotive arguments based on extralegal values, he said"

Hamas Is Using Civilians as Human Shields but Its Latest Directive Is the Most Shocking - "To drive home the point on the human shield tactic, the IDF tweeted this animation comparing Israeli homes with bomb shelters in the basement with Gaza homes used by Hamas to hide weapons"

James Altucher's answer to Wealth: What is the most reliable way to be making at least $250,000/year within 8 years of graduating with a Bachelor's in Computer Science? - Quora - "First off, forget about your bachelor's in Computer Science. I did that and then went to grad school for CS. Worthless. The only way to make real wealth is to get rid of your salary. In a salary, by definition, you are creating wealth for others and you are creating a chain and handcuffs for yourself... I'm on the board of a billion revs employment agency. I can tell you the facts: income is going down relative to inflation for 40 years in a row. And the entire middle class is getting fired. I don't mean this in a scary way. It's just the facts right now. Maybe it will change. I hope so but I doubt it. I'm not even suggesting go out and start a company. Running a company is a lot of painful work. Employees have sex with each other and clients want bribes and programs don't work at demos. More than half the unemployed have college degrees (another comment: "College is not just about the money". And my response: "then don't let your kids get $100,000 in debt just so they can read books for a few years.")... I kept seeing this guy Steve Scott on Amazon. His books kept beating my books on Amazon's lists. How could "23 Anti-Procrastination Habits" rank higher than "Choose Yourself!" Other books would be: "70 Healthy Habits", or "How to Start a Successful Blog in One Hour". And every few weeks there would be another book. First I noticed it under Steve Scott. But then, with a completely different picture, I noticed the same style of books coming up under SJ Scott. He was like a machine of books. ".99 is the New Free", "Declutter Your Inbox", and on and on."

Gong Cha Menu | Green, Oolong, Earl Grey, Fruit Tea & Milk Coffee | Singapore - "Today, the health benefits of tea such as its high levels of antioxidants as well as its low calorie content are available throughout Singapore as well as the rest of the world."
This is rich

Nation’s Liberals Suffering From Outrage Fatigue | The Onion - America's Finest News Source - "According to a study released Monday by the Hammond Political Research Group, many of the nation's liberals are suffering from a vastly diminished sense of outrage... "For a while, I wanted more fuel for the fire, to really get my blood boiling," said Madison, WI resident Dorothy Levine, a reproductive-rights activist and former Howard Dean campaign volunteer. "I read the policy papers on the Brookings web site. I subscribed to The Progressive. I clipped cartoons by Tom Tomorrow and Ted Rall. I listened to NPR all day. But then, it was like, while I was reading Molly Ivins' Bushwhacked, eight more must-read anti-Bush books came out. It was overwhelming. By the time they released Fahrenheit 9/11, I was too exhausted to drag myself to the theater.""

A Marijuana Lubricant That Gives You a 15-Minute Climax

Kamikaze, the Original Suicide Bombers? - "Tore Torihama, a woman once called the kamikaze's "mama-san." She ran a small restaurant in Chiran where many of the pilots had their last meals and confided all the things they could not say in their heavily censored letters home. "My grandmother told me the boys knew the war was lost, knew their lives were being thrown away by their commanders," he said through a translator. "They flew their missions because the social pressures on them were so great, they could not back down." Today, he has transformed the old restaurant into an alternative kamikaze museum, to keep alive the message passed on by his grandmother — that the suicide pilots were not heroes, but the victims of fanaticism. "

Kathleen Parker: Fair warning, provoking a thought is literature’s job - The Washington Post - "literature, apparently, is fair game for those tortured souls who fear that some -ism or another might leap from a page, causing what exactly? A moment of discomfort? An opportunity to sort through one’s emotional attic? Or, heavens, exposure to an involuntary insight?... Mightn’t students Google a book in advance of reading if they’re so fearful of a psychological crisis? One is surprised that student organizers at these schools would use such a loaded word as “trigger,” given its obvious association with guns. Without making light of anyone’s ethnicity, race or trauma, especially rape or stress disorder suffered by veterans (another specific group of concern), such precautions are misplaced in an institution of higher learning where one is expected to be intellectually challenged and where one’s psychological challenges are expected to be managed elsewhere. There are, besides, other ways to inform oneself about a course or literary assignment that might be problematic for whatever reason. Then again, if reading “The Great Gatsby” causes one undue angst owing to its abuse, classism, sexism and whatever-ism, then one might consider that college is not the right place at the right time... Most if not all of Shakespeare and the Greek tragedies would require so many labels they’d look like a Prius in Portland. Lest I leave anyone unoffended, studying at the adult level, that is, in an institution of higher learning, isn’t supposed to make one feel good — or necessarily bad. It is to make one feel challenged, excited by new ideas, elevated by fresh insights, broadened by others’ perspectives."