Links - 9th December 2014

Timeline Photos - Cats of Singapore - ""The PSLE school posting results are coming out soon. My son hopes to study at a SAP school, like Hwa Chong Institution. I'm actually worried that he might get accepted."
"Is it because SAP schools promote ethnic segregation and elitist, Sinocentric thinking? And that they reinforce the idea that Malays and Indians are inferior to the Chinese?"
"What? No. Have you seen the human traffic jams on Bukit Timah road? Someone's definitely going to step on his tail."
#KittiesOfBukitBatok #MustMaintainRacialBalanceHor #EliteUncaringFace #AllAnimalsEqual #ButSomeMoreEqual"
Apparently it is okay to bash SAP schools for this, but to bring up parallels with Madrasahs brings about "hatred, segregation and disunity" and has an obectionable tone

Lena Dunham, Zuckerberg Controversies: Dangers of Feminist Overreach - "Last week, in his first-ever public Q&A, Mark Zuckerberg was asked why he wears plain gray t-shirts apparently every waking moment of his life. “I’d feel I’m not doing my job if I spent any of my energy on things that are silly or frivolous about my life,” the Facebook CEO replied. Sounds innocuous enough, right? Not to some feminist critics... Zuckerberg did not explicitly—or, I'd argue, implicitly—contrast himself with women, but merely stated that he finds fashion concerns to be "silly" and "frivolous." If anything, he was referring to his fellow male tech CEOs, like Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and his Prada suits; after all, only 6 percent of Silicon Valley CEOs are female. But in criticizing Zuckerberg, Davis and Krupnick relied on a stereotype that he himself did not—that only women care about clothes—and perhaps even reinforced that stereotype in sounding the feminist alarm... [many feminists] eviscerated Dunham and attacked anyone, including other feminists, who dared defend Dunham’s actions as normal—or, at least, not criminal—childhood behavior. This culminated with one feminist writing a public letter to Planned Parenthood asking them to drop Dunham as a spokesperson due to her “pattern of coercion that happened over the course of years, and the near-pornographic and remorseless way Dunham describes these incidents as an adult.” There is a hashtag, of course: #DropDunham. The deeper irony here is that Dunham has been one of the leading celebrity figures in the mainstreaming of feminism today. None other than Taylor Swift credits Dunham with Swift’s own feminist awakening. Dunham's hardly perfect—her handling of race comes to mind—but does she really deserve to be on feminists' hit list?... if feminism becomes like the boy who cried wolf—if girls, and women, cry sexism too readily and often—America will stop listening. The minute feminism becomes hypercritical and humorless, it becomes too easy for the mainstream to dismiss our more valid complaints... there are millions of undeniable victims of sexual assault in America, and thousands of perpetrators who are never held accountable. Does the seven-year-old Lena Dunham really rank high on the scale of prosecutorial priorities? Her sister Grace has denied that she is a victim—issuing a series of tweets including, “As a queer person: I’m committed to people narrating their own experiences, determining for themselves what has and has not been harmful.” The desire of some feminists to “speak truth to power” ran headlong into Grace Dunham’s desire to speak her own damn truth.In her essay about the Dunham debate, Time’s Jessica Bennett wrote about the paradox of feminists championing the success of women yet often being the first to scrutinize women when they succeed"
Yet, some feminists mock the substitution effect (that raising a hue and cry over non-issues distracts from real ones), much less the 'feminist who cried wolf' effect

Is Paternity Fraud really a “ticking time bomb”? - Marilyn Stowe Blog - "does it really matter whether a child is the biological offspring of his or her father? Does it really matter if a loving father and his child never find out? What harm is being done to the man, child or woman concerned – that is until they find out and the predictable fallout occurs?... Nor do I believe that women who have had affairs are fundamentally wicked creatures who should be required to confess all, if they have become pregnant by one man and have decided to save their relationship by shielding a partner and child – and, in most cases, themselves – from the truth... Can all that harm and all that trauma be justified simply because of the man’s “right to know”? I don’t think it is. I don’t support the decision by Boots to sell paternity testing kits over the counter. Experience has taught me, time and time again, that no good comes of opening Pandora’s Box."
Comment: "Using the logic in the article, one can easily create why raped women should never report their story to the police :)"

Physical Attractiveness, Dating Behavior, and Implications for Women - "The primary objective of this study was to determine which of two sociological theories of dating preference was more powerful in predicting women's actual dating frequency. The two theories tested were Waller's theory, which emphasizes physical attractiveness, and Blood's theory, which emphasizes personality. The present study supported Waller's theory. Discussion and implications for women and counselors are presented."

Patriarchy, Male Competition, and Excess Male Mortality - "across nations, women’s social and economic empowerment had a strong inverserelationship with the disparity between male and female mortality from both external(direct behavioral) and (behaviorally mediated) internal causes, even when accountingfor general economic inequality and the prevalence of polygyny. This study demon-strates the usefulness of an evolutionary framework for explaining contemporary socialphenomena and important public health issues."

The cost of getting lean: Is it really worth the trade-off? - "Elite bodybuilders getting ready for a contest and models getting ready for a shoot are basically in a slow starvation process. Adhering to an extremely strict and precise regimen of eating and training (and perhaps adding some drugs into the mix) is the only way way they can drop their body fat to extremely low levels... But this process is not for the faint of heart. It goes against biological cues. It requires exercising when exhausted. It demands ignoring their desire for food in the face of powerful hunger cues. It involves intense focus and dedication. And it often distracts from other areas of life that these athletes might enjoy and value."

Based on LKY's and PAP own philosophy, nobody should be paid for not working - "I refer to the article: "WHY ARE WE PAYING $16K TO AN MP WHO CAN’T EVEN STAND AND ATTEND MEET-THE-PEOPLE SESSION?"... He made several judgement errors like the stop at two, graduate mothers, joining Malaysia, playing up the Malaysia for Malaysians , detention with trail, suppressing opposition etc. hence his political career comprises of both positives and negatives. He contributed but earned a salary for the contributions and also enjoyed other financial and other benefits. The question is should we pay him ex gracia payment for his past contributions. I will say yes for being the leader of the team that built modern SIngapore. The amount subject to approval by Parliament. But should he continue to be a MP and receive 16k allowance. It is tied to job scope. If a civil servant cannot carry out his job due to ill health do we allow him to stay on the job and continue to pay or transfer him to a lesser demanding job with a reduced pay... Based on LKY's and PAP own philosophy, nobody should be paid for not working. Singapore does not have social welfare like western countries"

Researchers 'appalled' as EU chief scientist role is axed - "The final decision came on the day Europe's scientists were celebrating the success of the Rosetta mission... In contrast to the official EU position, Ms Glover said that opposing the technology was "a form of madness". During the Summer, green groups published a letter to the incoming President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, urging him to scrap the role. The claimed that the position was "unaccountable, intransparent and controversial". The CSA, according to the letter, "presented one-sided, partial opinions in the debate on the use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture, repeatedly claiming that there was a scientific consensus about their safety". Despite strong support from scientific bodies, Prof Glover's mandate expired at the end of the Barroso presidency - and Jean-Claude Juncker has decided to formally close the Bureau of European Policy Advisers which included the CSA"

Murder 'comes naturally' to chimpanzees - "Prof Joan Silk from Arizona State University said the results "should finally put an end to the idea" that violence in wild chimpanzees was a product of human interference. She suggested that our perceptions of our evolutionary cousins can sometimes be distorted, because we want to believe that it is the nice behaviours, not the nasty ones, which have deep evolutionary roots... "I'm very glad they're publishing this," he told BBC News. It answers a "long, long history of resistance", Prof de Waal explained, to the idea of natural, inter-community violence in chimpanzees. "It has always been contentious - we've had meetings where people screamed at each other. "What this paper does is, instead of getting into the ideology and the history of these arguments... they have just taken the data and analysed it, and said: Where do the chips fall?" The chips, in this case, appear to fall in favour of a natural history of violence"
This is like the belief that all Evil in the world can be traced to the White Man

Chimpanzees are natural born killers, study says, and they prefer mob violence - "“The behavior of non-human primates, particularly chimpanzees, are often distorted by ideology and anthropomorphism, which produce a predisposition to believe that morally desirable features, such as empathy and altruism, have deep evolutionary roots, whereas undesirable features, such as group-level violence and sexual coercion, do not,” she wrote. “This reflects a naive form of biological determinism.”"

IDF on Twitter: "#GenderEquality means men & women carry the stretcher together. Shabbat Shalom from the #InspiringWomen of the IDF! http://t.co/AGTnvPJj13" - "#GenderEquality means men & women carry the stretcher together. Shabbat Shalom from the #InspiringWomen of the IDF!"

Male Guilt: Three Lessons from #ShirtStorm - "There are three big lesson we can learn from #ShirtStorm about the brave new world of feminist grievance-mongering that we have just landed on.
1) They’re not just going after the frat boys.
2) The new orthodoxy is total.
3) There are no logically consistent rules."

Steve Jobs Dropped The First iPod Prototype Into An Aquarium To Prove A Point - "“Those are air bubbles,” he snapped. “That means there’s space in there. Make it smaller.”"

It's Official—iOS 8 Is Apple's Buggiest Release to Date

Michael Phelps' 'girlfriend' Taylor Lianne Chandler says she was born male - "She had previously detailed their first date, to a Baltimore Ravens games, to the National Enquirer. 'One thing led to the next, and we made love during halftime,' she claims in the interview. 'Later, we had sex again. The intimacy with him was amazing! It was the first time in my life that someone has made me feel like a true woman.' She also told the magazine that she never lied to the swimmer about her past, saying it just never came up"