Links - 15th October 2014

Student Dies of Heart Attack Looking at Erotic Magazine at Sperm Bank - "The case came to light after the man's family took the sperm bank to court, saying that they were responsible for his death. The court ruled that Zheng, 23, a former medical student at the hospital, was ultimately responsible for deciding how many times he wanted to visit the sperm bank. The court heard how he signed up to the programme in 2011, and made four visits to donate to the centre's sperm bank in 10 days. His family demanded £500,000 in compensation, saying that they had pressurised him into taking part in the programme, and had failed to treat him properly when he was found unconscious."

50 Things to Eat in Singapore Before You Die 2012 | I-S Magazine Online
Why all atas food ah?

Nude model photo leaks (Part I): S'pore models tricked into stripping for camera - "“At the end of the shoot, he said, ‘Why don’t you just do 10 minutes of nude shoots, and I’ll pay you $200 more’,” she said, opening up about her story for the first time to Yahoo Singapore. “Honestly, $200 for 10 minutes — to a student (like me), that’s really a lot.”
She was desperate for the money at that time, too as two ex-boyfriends had cheated her of her savings, and a former employer had not paid her more than $1,500 from a previous part-time job she did.
It was awkward, she said, but she told herself to endure it, reminding herself that it was just 10 minutes. “It’s like lighting up a cigarette and waiting till it finishes burning — it’s that kind of time frame, 10 minutes. So I just endured it, got it over and done with, and then rushed to the toilet to get my clothes back on,” she added."
Presumably it's not being "tricked" only if you're not paid

Nude model photo leaks in Singapore (Part II): Why they happen, why victims keep quiet - "Seah points out that there are bad eggs on both sides — he has learned of instances where models have manipulated photographers and nearly gotten them into trouble, hence the importance of contracts, which will protect both parties. “There was a girl who went to a friend’s house, and said she wanted to try nude photography… so he took the photos, said they were not nice and deleted the shots in front of her, saying, ok, I’m not going to keep these photos because they didn’t work out,” he shared. “The next day, this girl reported him to the police, saying he forced her into nude photography… and he had no proof that she was the one who wanted to do the shoot.”"

Bloomberg's folly : Columbia Journalism Review - "In a stroke, Bloomberg was becoming an important player in international news—and now, just as suddenly, it has tainted its corporate identity and journalism brand to a degree that could last for years. All because of its China coverage... The defining moment, however, the one that has dealt the deepest shock to Bloomberg and may affect it for years, was a widely reported speech by the company’s chairman, Peter T. Grauer, who in March said, in effect, that Bloomberg had gotten carried away with its investigative journalism in China to the detriment of its true vocation: selling computerized terminals that provide financial information... while Hong Kong’s Ming Pao newspaper had done the first detailed reporting on high-level elite corruption involving Bo Xilai, Bloomberg was the first foreign news agency to touch the Xi Jinping family’s business interests and thus broke completely new ground. “We got exclusive stuff, and that really got people excited,” he added.

Wimbledon pays equal prize money - "Roger Federer, the 2006 men's champion, earned £655,000 while Amelie Mauresmo took home £625,000 for winning the women's title. The All England Club had previously defended the difference by saying that women had best-of-three-set matches while the men had best-of-five contests.
Equal pay for unequal work. Most feminists: silence (an exception)

Women's prisons should close, says justice taskforce - "Women should not be sent to prison and should instead serve community sentences, according to a new report by the Women's Justice Taskforce."
Women's Justice = sending men to prison, but not women
Comment: "I thought this site promoted feminism and equality?
If someone is found guilty of a crime that warrants a custodial sentence their gender should be of no consequence. To suggest otherwise is extraordinarily misogynistic. At best you're validating the notion that women are all delicate little flowers who need to be treated in a special way lest their fragility result in them suffering. At worst you're saying that women who break the law should be held to a lesser standard of responsibility for that than men who do the exact same thing."
Feminists: silence

Downloading Games Might Not Be Better for the Environment After All, Study Finds - "There is an exception to this: games that are less than 1.3 GB in size prove to have a lower footprint when downloaded. Factors like increased Internet speeds will have an effect on the situation as time goes on, but the study also notes the increasing file sizes of games may offset that. Likewise, consumer behavior--like taking the bus or driving to the store to buy a game and nothing else--also plays a role in how much better physical distribution is for larger games."

He knew his vote would sign their death warrant - "Not a day goes by that newly retired Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell does not think about the two goat herders he and three comrades encountered on a late June day in 2005 while searching Afghanistan's border with Pakistan for an elusive Taliban leader. Stealth is the tradecraft of the elite special forces soldiers, and that element of surprise was compromised when the herders approached the unit, Luttrell said during an exclusive interview Tuesday on TODAY. The team members had to make a quick decision: Kill the herders, or let them go and risk giving away their position to the Taliban. The men of Seal Team 10 made the decision that comported to the rules of engagement, but it ended up costing the lives of Luttrell's best friend, two others and 16 more servicemen who tried to rescue them. They let the herders go... Executing the Afghanis would have been illegal, under U.S. law, and could have exposed the American soldiers to prosecution back at home. The alternative was to let them go, and risk tipping their hand to the enemy. And that's exactly what happened."

The 6 Worst Things About iTunes

Why I Hate iTunes, and You Should Too - "iTunes, and more importantly the iTunes music store, was in its time a marvel. It made music available on demand—and as single tracks, not on costly CDs—at a price lots of people were willing to pay. But the software soon became the biggest pain point in your computer system. Adam Lashinsky at Fortune has the rundown here about how iTunes morphed from a music file manager into a “TV, DVD player, radio, DJ, college class and software store.” And, I’d add, Thing That Makes Me Terrified to Plug My iPhone Into My Computer. Click on that sync button, and there goes your afternoon.

Apple iPhone, Black Friday Deals: Why We Wait for Hours to Buy Stuff - "For the most part, consumers aren’t waiting in line for logical reasons. They aren’t there to get the absolute best prices, nor (limited edition Nikes notwithstanding) to get their hands on a scarce, highly valuable commodity. What is it, then? Consumer analysts and marketing researchers offer this explanation, which is puzzling to those of us who try to avoid queues like the plague: Waiting in line is fun, and makes you feel good about yourself."

Women at their 'most attractive' at 30, men at 34, survey says

Aborted babies incinerated to heat UK hospitals - "The bodies of thousands of aborted and miscarried babies were incinerated as clinical waste, with some even used to heat hospitals"

How to set a honey trap - "Despite what you see on James Bond, most femme fatales don’t approach an espionage target and start fluttering their eyelashes wildly. As Professor Wolff says, “You can’t just deliver a flood of very attractive Russian females – somebody will of course notice". Instead, many engineer a chance meeting... The most successful acts of seduction aren’t quick flings but long-term emotional manipulations, where the target often believes that they’ve fallen in love. After World War Two, there were far more women than men in West Germany, and so the East German government sent “Romeo” spies to entrap lonely secretaries. In some instances, the spy married his target and admitted that he was a double agent – but working for a friendly country. “Romeo” would tell his wife that his government was worried that West Germany wasn’t being completely honest – could she provide a few details to keep his boss happy? These marriages could last for decades. In the ‘60s, a communist mole who had infiltrated the CIA gained his colleague’s trust through wife swapping. Free love helped Karl and Hana Koecher get to know important CIA officials, and they then passed information onto the KGB. Meanwhile a French diplomat, Bernard Boursicot, was seduced by Chinese secret agent Shei Pei Pu – whom Boursciot thought was a woman, but was in fact a man. The pair were together for 18 years, and Shei Pei Pu even convinced Boursciot that he was pregnant and had given birth to their son. Having sex for your country may not sound like the most patriotic act, but spy agencies believe that seductive espionage can be a valuable way of ensuring national security. As Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB general, once said: "In America, in the West, occasionally you ask your men to stand up for their country. In Russia, we just ask our young women to lay down.”"
No wonder Singapore's SIB interview asks if you're into swinging

Lingerie brand Tezenis removes 'Crime Scene' knickers after outrage over 'rape' connotations
Comments: 'So we used to have feminists burning their bras, now we have them removing their knickers. Why didn't Tezenis just tell Radhika to get a life ?'
'Seriously? Rape? What? Am I the only one who gets absolutely no connotation of rape from this whatsoever, the only time I would think it had a connotation of rape is now that several perma-offended harridans on Twitter have said they think it's about rape. My initial reaction was that the connotation was of skid marks. Not rape.'
'If I had read the slogan without first knowing that someone thought it was to do with rape, I would have thought it was to with the general sexual 'naughtiness' associated with that part of the body. It is using sexual fun as a selling point.'
Whatever happened to: 'If you don't like it, don't buy it' (the usual liberal response to censorship)?

Revealed: identity of Fifi the stunning wartime spy - "For decades, the existence of a Second World War secret agent codenamed ‘Fifi’ was dismissed as fiction. Security chiefs laughed off stories of a beautiful blonde employed as an ‘agente provocatrice’ to tempt British trainee spies into giving away secrets. Almost 70 years later, Fifi’s existence has been confirmed and her identity disclosed. She was Marie Christine Chilver, hired at 22 by the wartime Special Operations Executive and employed in a role so covert that it was known to only a handful of people... Posing as a French journalist – she was fluent in several European languages - she was tasked with charming young trainees and engaging them in conversation over drinks or dinner, gaining their confidence and extracting information from them. The reports she wrote decided whether the trainees could be trusted on foreign assignments, and for some she was their downfall"