Part of Paris bridge collapses under weight of 'love locks' left by tourists - "The practice is believed to have started in Russia but has spread all over the world. It is especially common in Paris, the city of lovers."
5 Shockingly Insane 'Game of Thrones' Fanfiction Sex Scenes | Cracked.com - "The reader makes a sudden realization as well, namely that they were just tricked into reading a story of underage incest by dire wolf mind control proxy. And then Maisie Williams, like the character she plays, adds the author of this story to the list of names she has to kill."
The 'Nordic model' of prostitution law is a myth - "We recently gave a talk titled “The Nordic model of prostitution policy does not exist”. The aim was to provoke reflection and a discussion, but also to tell the truth about prostitution policies in the Nordic countries... Contrary to many common feminist appraisals, these laws do not in fact send a clear message as to what and who is the problem with prostitution; on the contrary, they are often implemented in ways that produce negative outcomes for people in prostitution... the Nordic countries' approaches must be judged with caution – and none more so than the most popular example, the case of Sweden... The claim that the number of people involved in prostitution has declined, for one, is largely based on the work of organisations that report on specific groups they work with, not the state of prostitution more generally: social workers, for example, count and get an impression based on their contact with women in street prostitution in the largest cities. There is no reason to believe that other forms of prostitution, hidden from view, are not still going on. The oft-cited 2010 Skarhed report acknowledges this – but still concludes that the law is a success based on the number of women in contact with social workers and police. Men involved in prostitution, women in indoor venues, and those selling sex outside the larger cities are therefore excluded from the scope of the report. This excessive focus on street prostitution handicaps many accounts of the law’s implementation, which tend to simply repeat Swedish authorities’ claims that the Sex Purchase Act has influenced the size of the prostitution markets... the Swedish Sex Purchase Act is often said to be an effective tool against human trafficking. The evidence for this claim is weak; Swedish authorities have backed it up with something said in a call intercepted by the police. The official data that does exist is vague; some authors have also pointed out that the act may have raised prices for sex, making trafficking for sexual purposes potentially more lucrative than ever... Even though surveys among the general public indicate great support for the law, the same material also shows a rather strong support for a criminalisation of sex sellers. This contradicts the idea that the law promotes an ideal of gender equality: instead, the criminalisation of sex buyers seems to influence people to consider the possibility of criminalising sex sellers as well. This rather confounds the idea that the “Nordic model” successfully shifts the stigma of prostitution from sex sellers to clients...
In Sweden this is embodied by the Aliens Act, which forbids foreign women from selling sex in Sweden and is used by the police to apprehend non-Swedish or migrant persons suspected of selling sex. This reveals the limits of the rhetoric of female victimisation, with clients framed as perpetrators: if the seller is foreign, she is to blame, and can be punished with deportation."
Cristiano Ronaldo’s injuries ahead of World Cup claimed as work of witch doctor in Ghana - "Believe it or not, the Australian team has had its own experience with voodoo, with the Socceroos thought to have broken its own curse in 2006 after 37 years. Former captain Johnny Warren blamed the Socceroo’s long losing streak on a hex placed on the team in 1969. He said the Australian team was cursed for not paying $1000 to a witch doctor in Mozambique who helped them win a elimination round for the World Cup in 1969. The Australians had asked the witch doctor to place a curse on opponents Rhodesia ahead of a crucial game which they ended up winning. However, when the witch doctor wasn’t paid for his services he vowed to reverse the curse and put it on the Aussies. “From that moment when he put the curse on every thing went wrong for the team”... The Socceroos finally re-entered the competition after Safran travelled to Mozambique and hired a witch doctor to lift the curse, which involved being splattered in chicken’s blood. After a long drought the Socceroos were finally able to qualify for the World Cup in 2006."
Philippine, Vietnamese troops drink beer, play volleyball on disputed isle - "Vietnamese and Philippine troops got together on a disputed island in the South China Sea on Sunday to play soccer and volleyball - as well as drink beer - in a display of unity that will not go unnoticed in Beijing... Coincidentally, the Philippines occupied Southwest Cay until early 1975, when troops from then South Vietnam seized it after Philippine forces sailed a couple of miles to Northeast Cay, which was under Manila's control, for a party."
‘Possessed’ maid allegedly eats kitten alive, runs amok the next day
Does Fertility Behavior Spread among Friends? - "a friend’s childbearing increases an individual’s risk of becoming a parent. We find a short-term, curvilinear effect: an individual’s risk of childbearing starts increasing after a friend’s childbearing, reaches its peak approximately two years later, and then decreases."
Cash to the poor: Pennies from heaven | The Economist - "[Unconditional Cash Transfers] work better than almost anyone would have expected. They dent the stereotype of poor people as inherently feckless and ignorant. But CCTs are usually better still, especially when dealing with the root causes of poverty and, rather than just alleviating it, helping families escape it altogether."
On the march - "White nationalists have called a rally in south Brisbane today. They huddle on one side of a street that runs along a park. Behind the park poke the cranes and skyscrapers of the city skyline. Getting wind of the rally weeks ago, a counter-protest has gathered on the other side of the street, to show support for multiculturalism. Two olive-skinned Greek men stand proud as a mob of angry white faces turn red, screaming and hectoring them. Before we go any further, there's something you need to know. The olive-skinned Greeks are part of the white nationalist crew. The mob of angry whites are the anti-racists. White nationalism is confusing in 2014. "Fascist Scum! Off our streets!" bellow the 200-odd anti-fascists at the 20 or so nationalists, a police line dividing the two... "NAZI SCUM OFF OUR STREETS!" roar the rest. A shuddering Cole pulls at his leather jacket lapel. "I've got my grandfather's British Legion badge on from when he fought in World War II," he says, trembling. "He was with the Black Watch and I'm a Nazi? I go to dawn service, I wear my grandfather's medals and I'm a Nazi?" Mr Sarcastic and Red Beard have moved onto another nationalist, in black hoody and sunglasses. "C...-sucking faggot!" shouts Red Beard. In the far-right rally in my head it would have been a fascist, not an anti-fascist, shouting this... Half an hour later, like everywhere else in the world, the white nationalists and anti-fascists have all started fidgeting with their smartphones. Everyone in the street looks out of energy... Everyone left is in a jolly mood. My smartphone vibrates in my pocket. It's a Facebook message from a stranger, one of the anti-racist protesters. "Saw you before. I wanted to ask what did you think of the protest? I found it a little weird. Kinda like we were the Nazis." "Why did you feel like you were the Nazis?" "Because we were a bigger mob harassing a smaller mob. What message are we sending them? That intimidation is okay, that's fine, you just have to have the bigger numbers? The other odd thing was marching people under the hammer and sickle flag. Is this 1945? Where people under the Soviet Union flag are chasing Nazis through the streets? It was like cosplay"... "A couple of activists experienced minor cuts. However, their spirit was undeterred. The responsibility for the violence today does not rest with any worker tricked into action by the CFMEU leader-group. It rests with this small core of union officials and organisers." CFMEU head office tell me they have not heard from police about the punch-up in the pub. They say they condemn fascism, but do not condone violence... That's the cherry on the pavlova. Australia: where even the immigrants hate immigrants. And where even the anti-racists bash wogs"
$1m gone in one year: Widow of killed Changi Airport worker is now broke - ""I was told not to touch my children's money as it was meant for their future," she said, adding that the financial adviser also suggested she could use the remaining money to set up a small business in Malaysia. But the money proved too much for Madam Pusparani to manage on her own... she decided to invest the remaining $100,000 in her brother's transport business in Kuala Lumpur, thinking it would give her a stable income. "But I was told the money was only enough to buy one lorry and we needed three lorries. So, I withdrew half of my children's money, which was about $400,000, to buy two more lorries"... the widow was told that the company was losing money. She said she fell out with her brother eventually and did not recover any of her investment... "My expenses came up to RM5,000 to RM6,000. Where do I find the money?" That last $400,000 she withdrew lasted her five months."
Keywords: Pusparani Mohan, Chandra Mogan
Addendum: Lorries are really expensive in Malaysia
These 40 Alien-Like Creatures Actually Live On Earth. I Can't Believe #3 Is Real!
Tiananmen, Forgotten - NYTimes.com - "Perhaps nowhere is this indifference toward politics and civil rights more pronounced than in the insouciance of young people about the Communist Party’s attempts to expunge historical truths from public memory. The majority of my generation still believes, for instance, that the war against Japanese invasion in the 1930s and ’40s was fought primarily by Communist soldiers, while the Nationalist army “passively resisted the Japanese and actively combated the Communists,” as told in my high school history textbook... Well-educated and worldly, they nonetheless see censorship more as a nuisance of daily life, something to be begrudgingly endured, rather than an infringement on their freedom of speech...
If the previous generations learned the cost of political transgression through persecutions and crackdowns, today’s youth, especially those from elite backgrounds, instinctively understand the futility of challenging the system. After all, most of the time, power interferes with our personal lives only in the form of nettlesome restrictions. These inconveniences — from censorship to the vehicle license lottery, a system that distributes a limited number of license plates to a huge number of new drivers who apply each month — feel not unlike the dogmatic words of Marxist philosophy in our school textbooks, which we mock in private but dutifully memorize and copy onto exams. Rebelling against these hurdles seems both naïve and unproductive — an understanding that the system has inculcated into us early on — as it would likely achieve little. Circumvention and compromise help us move forward, in a society where the price of falling behind is surely greater than the minor harms in our daily lives caused by state power. Over time, such an approach is rationalized, and even defended by the very group of young elites who in previous generations have been the most passionate advocates for change. Last October, Xia Yeliang, an economics professor at Peking University, was dismissed from his job after making bold demands for political change. The school insisted that Mr. Xia was fired for poor teaching skills. When the news broke, scores of university students rushed to defend the school’s claim on social media from what one called “Western media’s typical tactic to smear the image of China.”"
Friday, July 04, 2014
Thursday, July 03, 2014
What women say they want, what women think they want and what women really want: revealing clothing
Provocative Clothing: If a woman doesn't like being stared at when she wears revealing clothing, is it wrong to tell her she should wear less revealing clothes? - Quora
Top Answer:
"I'm kind of struggling with this one.
Why does a woman dress in revealing clothes?
I asked my daughters.
I have two daughters - one is 21 years old and comfortable with who she is. She is a buxom, very attractive young lady. (think young Marilyn Monroe but with red hair.[ Actually don't - that's my daughter you're thinking about! ] )
The other is 13 and just discovering who she is. She's a pretty willowy blond at that long legged "coltish" kind of stage. She's just discovering that boys might actually be quite interesting.
My eldest said she wears clothes that enhance her "assets" because, "it makes me feel good". I pushed her on that though, "it makes me feel confident" she said. Confident about what? "Oh I don't know, I look good, guys notice me."
So you wear low cut tops and stuff because it makes you feel good when guys notice you? "No...well yeah...but that's not all it's about." So what then? "It means that I know I'm looking good and that people -not just guys, will notice me, I'll get served before other people at the bar and.... well it's just one less thing to worry about." So looking "hot" means less to worry about? "Dad people are shallow, they value how others look more than I do, but I know I look good so I don't even need to think about it." Ok - so you like getting positive attention from guys and you don't get bitchy attention from girls when you dress like that? "Pretty much." So what about the guys you don't want attention from? "Hey - Daaad... come on, I can't control who looks at me, but it's not them I'm dressing up for." Well I think you look very pretty. "Perv - I'm your daughter!"
My youngest wears skinny tops and 2nd skin leggings. She's the prettiest little thing. (and has her dad wrapped around her finger.)
Hey bunny, you look good, what's going on? "Dad... remember it's Kate's sleepover, you said you'd drive me." Did I? OK go get dressed then. "Dad I am dressed."
What - I thought you were dressed up to go clubbing or something - could a skirt get any shorter? "Dad you know I'm too young to go clubbing - we're going to watch a DVD and make some popcorn and stuff."
Is Kate's big brother going to be there? And his friends? "Yeah but they'll just be going out or something."
Yeah well just make sure the "or something" isn't trying it on with his sisters friends. "Daaad - that's gross. Boys are just stupid." "Besides he's in 4th year and I'm only in 1st." OK well I've got some overalls you can borrow to make sure he doesn't think you're interesting or anything if you wan't. "Daaaaaad- just - no." So you're not interested, he's not interested but you're going over there in a skirt that ends just below your butt and you'll all probably call him "pervy" if you catch him sneaking a look at your legs? "Dad it's complicated -you don't understand."
Well do you know what fellow Quorans and OP - I don't fucking understand. But I'll tell you what. Looking is not sexual harassment.
Just keep your eyes off my daughters...."
Also:
"Lets say you're a billionaire driving around the town in your Rolls Royce and flaunting your Armani suit, Gucci Shoes, Rolex watch etc.. Well someone might find this show of affluence unnecessary. but quite possibly you are proud of what you've earned for yourself and feel good confident about showing off...
Now, how people react to you is their business until they cross the line... if someone stops by to check out your car and says "Amazing......" I guess this is completely fine."
"I'd like to quote an anecdote from my sister's orientation program as told by her when she was starting college.
The principal of the institution (i'm assuming she is;a little hazy on the details) performed a simple demonstration to answer this dilemma shrewdly and perhaps convincingly.
She did the following to explain why the college did not have a dress code.
Demo #1
She dropped something on stage and asked a girl from the joining batch to pick it up. The girl held the neckline of her shirt to prevent cleavage from showing and then bent down to pick it up.
Demo #2
She asked a senior to do the same. This time,the senior didn't give a hoot. She bent,revealing a little,picked it up and gave it back to the speaker.
After this,the principal (assuming she was) said the following words "If you wear,you shouldn't care and if you care,you shouldn't wear"
In conclusion,men are always going to stare. It's a woman's choice (and burden)
P.S:I know this is a rather unpopular opinion but it's also true."
"I'm pretty shocked at how many people think it's wrong to stare at a woman wearing revealing clothes. If try didn't want to be stared at then they shouldn't be wearing clothes that show off their breast and ass. If Brad Pitt walked around in his underwear and no shirt, can most women honestly say they wouldn't star or at least look at him often? Women do have the right to wear whatever they want but they shouldn't complain from the attention they get if they dress provocatively...
Stop always blaming men for everything and expect us to be saints when what your wearing shows more skin than it covers!"
Top Answer:
"I'm kind of struggling with this one.
Why does a woman dress in revealing clothes?
I asked my daughters.
I have two daughters - one is 21 years old and comfortable with who she is. She is a buxom, very attractive young lady. (think young Marilyn Monroe but with red hair.[ Actually don't - that's my daughter you're thinking about! ] )
The other is 13 and just discovering who she is. She's a pretty willowy blond at that long legged "coltish" kind of stage. She's just discovering that boys might actually be quite interesting.
My eldest said she wears clothes that enhance her "assets" because, "it makes me feel good". I pushed her on that though, "it makes me feel confident" she said. Confident about what? "Oh I don't know, I look good, guys notice me."
So you wear low cut tops and stuff because it makes you feel good when guys notice you? "No...well yeah...but that's not all it's about." So what then? "It means that I know I'm looking good and that people -not just guys, will notice me, I'll get served before other people at the bar and.... well it's just one less thing to worry about." So looking "hot" means less to worry about? "Dad people are shallow, they value how others look more than I do, but I know I look good so I don't even need to think about it." Ok - so you like getting positive attention from guys and you don't get bitchy attention from girls when you dress like that? "Pretty much." So what about the guys you don't want attention from? "Hey - Daaad... come on, I can't control who looks at me, but it's not them I'm dressing up for." Well I think you look very pretty. "Perv - I'm your daughter!"
My youngest wears skinny tops and 2nd skin leggings. She's the prettiest little thing. (and has her dad wrapped around her finger.)
Hey bunny, you look good, what's going on? "Dad... remember it's Kate's sleepover, you said you'd drive me." Did I? OK go get dressed then. "Dad I am dressed."
What - I thought you were dressed up to go clubbing or something - could a skirt get any shorter? "Dad you know I'm too young to go clubbing - we're going to watch a DVD and make some popcorn and stuff."
Is Kate's big brother going to be there? And his friends? "Yeah but they'll just be going out or something."
Yeah well just make sure the "or something" isn't trying it on with his sisters friends. "Daaad - that's gross. Boys are just stupid." "Besides he's in 4th year and I'm only in 1st." OK well I've got some overalls you can borrow to make sure he doesn't think you're interesting or anything if you wan't. "Daaaaaad- just - no." So you're not interested, he's not interested but you're going over there in a skirt that ends just below your butt and you'll all probably call him "pervy" if you catch him sneaking a look at your legs? "Dad it's complicated -you don't understand."
Well do you know what fellow Quorans and OP - I don't fucking understand. But I'll tell you what. Looking is not sexual harassment.
Just keep your eyes off my daughters...."
Also:
"Lets say you're a billionaire driving around the town in your Rolls Royce and flaunting your Armani suit, Gucci Shoes, Rolex watch etc.. Well someone might find this show of affluence unnecessary. but quite possibly you are proud of what you've earned for yourself and feel good confident about showing off...
Now, how people react to you is their business until they cross the line... if someone stops by to check out your car and says "Amazing......" I guess this is completely fine."
"I'd like to quote an anecdote from my sister's orientation program as told by her when she was starting college.
The principal of the institution (i'm assuming she is;a little hazy on the details) performed a simple demonstration to answer this dilemma shrewdly and perhaps convincingly.
She did the following to explain why the college did not have a dress code.
Demo #1
She dropped something on stage and asked a girl from the joining batch to pick it up. The girl held the neckline of her shirt to prevent cleavage from showing and then bent down to pick it up.
Demo #2
She asked a senior to do the same. This time,the senior didn't give a hoot. She bent,revealing a little,picked it up and gave it back to the speaker.
After this,the principal (assuming she was) said the following words "If you wear,you shouldn't care and if you care,you shouldn't wear"
In conclusion,men are always going to stare. It's a woman's choice (and burden)
P.S:I know this is a rather unpopular opinion but it's also true."
"I'm pretty shocked at how many people think it's wrong to stare at a woman wearing revealing clothes. If try didn't want to be stared at then they shouldn't be wearing clothes that show off their breast and ass. If Brad Pitt walked around in his underwear and no shirt, can most women honestly say they wouldn't star or at least look at him often? Women do have the right to wear whatever they want but they shouldn't complain from the attention they get if they dress provocatively...
Stop always blaming men for everything and expect us to be saints when what your wearing shows more skin than it covers!"
Monday, June 30, 2014
Links - 30th June 2014
Video Games Improve Vision, Study Says - "Playing "action" video games improves a visual ability crucial for tasks like reading and driving at night, a new study says... Previous research shows that gaming improves other visual skills, such as the ability to track several objects at the same time and paying attention to a series of fast-moving events, Bavelier said"
The Quiet Death of Moderate Islam - "Let’s assume that the pro-lynching Afrikaners are mostly law-abiding and that their support for lynching is based upon sincerely held religious beliefs – after all, some in the Dutch Reformed Church once believed that black Africans belonged to a lower race than whites and that black skin was the ‘mark of Cain’. Let’s also assume that their religious leaders assert that their religion commands them to obey the laws of the countries in which they live and that that any support for lynching applies only in an ‘ideal Apartheid state’?... When I was a child, my relatives would tell me that the hadud punishments of stoning, beheading and limb amputation weren’t part of modern Islam – such practices belonged to another time, in the same way that burning witches in Europe belonged to another time. I was told that the only Muslims that supported such practices were ‘backward’ and the only places that practiced them were ‘barbaric’ – in time ‘education’ would enlighten these simple folk and drag them into modernity. Yet I’ve grown up and seen the opposite happen. These days, one can happily believe and even state publicly that the death penalty should apply to anyone who has sex outside of marriage, takes part in a homosexual act, insults the Prophet or leaves Islam without being ‘extreme’. As long as one says “in an ideal Islamic society”... even though it’s convenient to pretend one thing in public, the media and the political class know deep down that people like me no longer represent the views of British Muslims... We face overwhelming hostility from the ‘vast majority of moderate Muslims’. We’re accused of causing fitnah and of being murtad – apostates, and as such we too warrant the death penalty alongside homosexuals in Baksh’s ideal Islamic state. It’s ironic that in modern Britain, it is far, far more dangerous for me to state my beliefs in public in than it is for Baksh to state his... Throughout Europe today, someone can advocate a Utopia in which gays and apostates are killed and nevertheless expect to be considered a ‘moderate’, fully entitled to and deserving of tolerance and respect. They can even call themselves an ‘anti-fascist’. As long as that Utopia is “an ideal Islamic society”."
Pain Now Is Easier Than Pain Later
'Selfie' body image warning issued - "Spending lots of time on Facebook looking at pictures of friends could make women insecure about their body image"
Don Corleone: Not a Nice Guy but No Psychopath - "None of the Mafia members scored higher than a 30, the generally accepted threshold for psychopathy, and only 10 percent had scores that would classify them as moderately psychopathic. Meanwhile, more than half of the non-Mafia men rated as either moderately or severely psychopathic. Mafia membership was also associated with low substance abuse and high family commitment"
Brendan O’Neill: Equal marriage is an elitist campaign with no roots in the public - "“I think same-sex marriage is an entirely invented, purely symbolic issue and it doesn’t have any roots in social activism,” he said. When asked to explain why he felt there was no public call for same-sex marriage he said: “Look at the way this [campaign] is, compared to the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, the differences are astounding. “There were mass protests, there were year-long boycotts, there was fighting, there were water cannons, people were arrested and put in jail... “I know there are lots of opinion polls which show that small majorities think it’s a good idea, 55%, 56% and so on, but if you look at those opinion polls in detail you’ll notice that larger majorities think it’s not an important issue. “People are tolerant of homosexuals, which is a wonderful, great thing, but they are confused by the priority that is given to this issue and I don’t think that’s surprising because this issue came out of thin air and it’s largely being pursued for the benefit of individual politicians and campaigners rather than for the benefit of society”... “The Stonewall rioters of 1969 said that all social institutions including marriage needed to be abolished. Now you have representatives of something called Stonewall coming in here and saying ‘we really want to get married’”... “If you read the government’s consutation on same-sex marriage it does not mention family, or children, or community, except when it twice talks about the transgender community. It doesn’t mention the fundamental things that marriage was originally bound up with, which was about managing and organising the renewal of generations. “You are elevating a bourgeois view of marriage which is marriage as companionship,” said Mr O’Neill. “Beyond your old couple there are millions of people for whom marriage is about more than two people.”"
Hong Chung Chow's answer to Indian People: Where did the Malaysian stereotype of Indians as alcoholics come from? - Quora - "If you wander off to rural areas in Malaysia, it's relatively easy to find Indian men congregating outside of Chinese medicine shop, after work, to buy cheaply packed hard liquor. Additionally, it's also easy to find many Indians wasting their time in local community coconut wine breweries. One can only wonder where are the Chinese"
How some young people have become their own online bullies - "While her parents, council manager Jonathan and his wife Sue, an office assistant, assumed Ellie was studying for her forthcoming exams, the teenager posted dozens of vicious remarks about herself over the course of a year... She is one of what seems to be a growing number of British teens indulging in the sinister and habit-forming practice of self-trolling... Fourteen-year-old Hannah Smith, from Lutterworth, Leicestershire, hanged herself in her bedroom last summer after messages were posted on Ask FM telling her to 'go die', 'get cancer' and 'drink bleach'. At first, as in Ellie's case, cyber-bullies were blamed for the abuse. Then her father revealed that detectives believed she had been sending the messages to herself... This appeared to confirm claims by the Latvian bosses of the site - initially greeted with shock and bewilderment - that 98 per cent of the messages could be traced back to Hannah's home... It takes less than a minute on Ask FM to find examples of young people trolling themselves without even pretending to be someone else... U.S. researchers found in a recent study of more than 600 first-year students that 9 per cent posted toxic remarks about themselves... Posting horrible remarks from 'strangers' saying they are fat or ugly is also a way for youngsters to attract compliments from friends who rush to contradict them - a quick fix for their self-esteem. Furthermore, being seen as a victim - or being seen to stand firm against 'bullying' - may win them status among their peers. Loneliness may be another factor, says Rachel. 'There are plenty of young people who have 1,000 friends on their Facebook page but only two or three real ones.' Just as children sometimes invent imaginary friends, it seems there is a strange comfort in inventing imaginary critics and appearing to have their attention... One clue that a young person may be actively seeking out bullying is if they turn off their privacy settings to boost the chances of attracting vitriolic comments from strangers"
'Bad-Eating Groups' Love to Hate Hong Kong's Ming General Restaurant - WSJ - "From gold-flecked dim sum to its traditional greeting, "Have you eaten yet?" Hong Kong is famous for its obsession with fine dining. Then there is Ming General Japanese Sushi Restaurant, which has built a fan base united by their belief that the restaurant's food is supremely terrible. "
Phone apps used for gay sex linked to higher STD risk - "Previous research found that app users were less likely to use condoms during sex and more likely to have multiple partners"
As Taylor Swift transforms to sexy rocker, her changing faces as good girl turns bad - "After the release of her first album, Fearless, she discovered bodycon and hair straightners. Then she made friends with Miley, and her dresses got shorter.
Two Teens 'Were Having Sex' When They Fell To Their Deaths From Balcony - ""They were trying to have sex on the balcony, the guy was lifting the girl and putting her on the bannister, he kept on doing it. "He was putting her on there - they were going back and forth. You could see they were doing some really dangerous stuff."
Burial ban blamed for spike in China suicide rates - "Burial has been a tradition in China for thousands of years. But some people apparently have felt so strongly about the recent change banning the practice that there have been a spate of alleged suicides to avoid the new rule... Zheng Shifang, from the village of Luting, was one of the six who committed suicide. She was 83 when she died, choosing to take her own life after village committee staff sawed her coffin – which she kept at home – in half in front of her."
ATHEIST MOBS RIOT OVER FB PHOTO DEEMED OFFENSIVE TO RICHARD DAWKINS - "Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Oxford, England chanting “Empirical evidence supported by controlled experimentation is Great” and burning effigies to Ronald MacDonald... Agnostics failed to riot, but stood on the sidelines cheering on the riot and taking credit for it anyways."
LOOK Scoot turns SGAG squabble into promotion
Do Big Money Bonuses Really Increase Job Performance? - "An incentive can be both a blessing and a curse because while it should motivate us, it can just as easily psych us out. Actual task performance may suffer because we’re obsessing about the money. Also, a bigger prize can make us more tightly focussed, but a tight focus is not useful for some tasks – for example those that involve creativity. Consequently behavioural economist Professor Dan Ariely and colleagues hypothesised that big bonuses might actually decrease people’s performance, and they set out to prove it (Ariely et al., 2004)."
And highly paid politicians...
'Organic' Isn't Clean and It Isn't Toxin-Free - "organic farms produce as much, or more, pollution than conventional farms and that organic products might actually contain more toxins than other foods."
California parents outraged by Pine Valley Middle School's explicit sex ed class - "the one which shocked them most was a picture of a man with a bloody face accompanied by a caption saying, 'A real man loves his woman every day of the month.' One parent said: 'This is horrific. This is unacceptable material.'"
Like some happiness with that? Fast food cues hurt ability to savor experience - "people living in communities with higher prevalence of fast-food restaurants were significantly less able to enjoy pleasurable activities that require savoring, even when controlling for economic factors of the individual and the neighborhood. The study’s authors propose that’s because fast food can incite people to feel more impatient, diminishing their ability to slow down and savour life’s simpler joys."
My fling with Dolly the Dolphin: Writer says lovesick mammal killed herself after six-month affair ended - "Malcolm, from Punta Garda, Florida, believes her death a short time later was a case of suicide and that she voluntarily stopped breathing. The relationship didn't break any laws as bestiality was only banned in Florida 2011. Malcolm has since been married twice but also describes himself as a 'zoophile' and says he has had previous sexual experiences with a dog. He said Margaret Howe Lovatt shouldn't feel any shame over her experience with the dolphin and that humans have a misunderstanding about sexual relationships with animals. "It's extremely upsetting. When my book came out I lost a job at a magazine because of the publicity and complaints from advertisers. "I don't understand why there is seen to be a slippery slope. "There is no comparison between sexual abuse and a sexual relationship with a consenting animal.""
The Quiet Death of Moderate Islam - "Let’s assume that the pro-lynching Afrikaners are mostly law-abiding and that their support for lynching is based upon sincerely held religious beliefs – after all, some in the Dutch Reformed Church once believed that black Africans belonged to a lower race than whites and that black skin was the ‘mark of Cain’. Let’s also assume that their religious leaders assert that their religion commands them to obey the laws of the countries in which they live and that that any support for lynching applies only in an ‘ideal Apartheid state’?... When I was a child, my relatives would tell me that the hadud punishments of stoning, beheading and limb amputation weren’t part of modern Islam – such practices belonged to another time, in the same way that burning witches in Europe belonged to another time. I was told that the only Muslims that supported such practices were ‘backward’ and the only places that practiced them were ‘barbaric’ – in time ‘education’ would enlighten these simple folk and drag them into modernity. Yet I’ve grown up and seen the opposite happen. These days, one can happily believe and even state publicly that the death penalty should apply to anyone who has sex outside of marriage, takes part in a homosexual act, insults the Prophet or leaves Islam without being ‘extreme’. As long as one says “in an ideal Islamic society”... even though it’s convenient to pretend one thing in public, the media and the political class know deep down that people like me no longer represent the views of British Muslims... We face overwhelming hostility from the ‘vast majority of moderate Muslims’. We’re accused of causing fitnah and of being murtad – apostates, and as such we too warrant the death penalty alongside homosexuals in Baksh’s ideal Islamic state. It’s ironic that in modern Britain, it is far, far more dangerous for me to state my beliefs in public in than it is for Baksh to state his... Throughout Europe today, someone can advocate a Utopia in which gays and apostates are killed and nevertheless expect to be considered a ‘moderate’, fully entitled to and deserving of tolerance and respect. They can even call themselves an ‘anti-fascist’. As long as that Utopia is “an ideal Islamic society”."
Pain Now Is Easier Than Pain Later
'Selfie' body image warning issued - "Spending lots of time on Facebook looking at pictures of friends could make women insecure about their body image"
Don Corleone: Not a Nice Guy but No Psychopath - "None of the Mafia members scored higher than a 30, the generally accepted threshold for psychopathy, and only 10 percent had scores that would classify them as moderately psychopathic. Meanwhile, more than half of the non-Mafia men rated as either moderately or severely psychopathic. Mafia membership was also associated with low substance abuse and high family commitment"
Brendan O’Neill: Equal marriage is an elitist campaign with no roots in the public - "“I think same-sex marriage is an entirely invented, purely symbolic issue and it doesn’t have any roots in social activism,” he said. When asked to explain why he felt there was no public call for same-sex marriage he said: “Look at the way this [campaign] is, compared to the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, the differences are astounding. “There were mass protests, there were year-long boycotts, there was fighting, there were water cannons, people were arrested and put in jail... “I know there are lots of opinion polls which show that small majorities think it’s a good idea, 55%, 56% and so on, but if you look at those opinion polls in detail you’ll notice that larger majorities think it’s not an important issue. “People are tolerant of homosexuals, which is a wonderful, great thing, but they are confused by the priority that is given to this issue and I don’t think that’s surprising because this issue came out of thin air and it’s largely being pursued for the benefit of individual politicians and campaigners rather than for the benefit of society”... “The Stonewall rioters of 1969 said that all social institutions including marriage needed to be abolished. Now you have representatives of something called Stonewall coming in here and saying ‘we really want to get married’”... “If you read the government’s consutation on same-sex marriage it does not mention family, or children, or community, except when it twice talks about the transgender community. It doesn’t mention the fundamental things that marriage was originally bound up with, which was about managing and organising the renewal of generations. “You are elevating a bourgeois view of marriage which is marriage as companionship,” said Mr O’Neill. “Beyond your old couple there are millions of people for whom marriage is about more than two people.”"
Hong Chung Chow's answer to Indian People: Where did the Malaysian stereotype of Indians as alcoholics come from? - Quora - "If you wander off to rural areas in Malaysia, it's relatively easy to find Indian men congregating outside of Chinese medicine shop, after work, to buy cheaply packed hard liquor. Additionally, it's also easy to find many Indians wasting their time in local community coconut wine breweries. One can only wonder where are the Chinese"
How some young people have become their own online bullies - "While her parents, council manager Jonathan and his wife Sue, an office assistant, assumed Ellie was studying for her forthcoming exams, the teenager posted dozens of vicious remarks about herself over the course of a year... She is one of what seems to be a growing number of British teens indulging in the sinister and habit-forming practice of self-trolling... Fourteen-year-old Hannah Smith, from Lutterworth, Leicestershire, hanged herself in her bedroom last summer after messages were posted on Ask FM telling her to 'go die', 'get cancer' and 'drink bleach'. At first, as in Ellie's case, cyber-bullies were blamed for the abuse. Then her father revealed that detectives believed she had been sending the messages to herself... This appeared to confirm claims by the Latvian bosses of the site - initially greeted with shock and bewilderment - that 98 per cent of the messages could be traced back to Hannah's home... It takes less than a minute on Ask FM to find examples of young people trolling themselves without even pretending to be someone else... U.S. researchers found in a recent study of more than 600 first-year students that 9 per cent posted toxic remarks about themselves... Posting horrible remarks from 'strangers' saying they are fat or ugly is also a way for youngsters to attract compliments from friends who rush to contradict them - a quick fix for their self-esteem. Furthermore, being seen as a victim - or being seen to stand firm against 'bullying' - may win them status among their peers. Loneliness may be another factor, says Rachel. 'There are plenty of young people who have 1,000 friends on their Facebook page but only two or three real ones.' Just as children sometimes invent imaginary friends, it seems there is a strange comfort in inventing imaginary critics and appearing to have their attention... One clue that a young person may be actively seeking out bullying is if they turn off their privacy settings to boost the chances of attracting vitriolic comments from strangers"
'Bad-Eating Groups' Love to Hate Hong Kong's Ming General Restaurant - WSJ - "From gold-flecked dim sum to its traditional greeting, "Have you eaten yet?" Hong Kong is famous for its obsession with fine dining. Then there is Ming General Japanese Sushi Restaurant, which has built a fan base united by their belief that the restaurant's food is supremely terrible. "
Phone apps used for gay sex linked to higher STD risk - "Previous research found that app users were less likely to use condoms during sex and more likely to have multiple partners"
As Taylor Swift transforms to sexy rocker, her changing faces as good girl turns bad - "After the release of her first album, Fearless, she discovered bodycon and hair straightners. Then she made friends with Miley, and her dresses got shorter.
Two Teens 'Were Having Sex' When They Fell To Their Deaths From Balcony - ""They were trying to have sex on the balcony, the guy was lifting the girl and putting her on the bannister, he kept on doing it. "He was putting her on there - they were going back and forth. You could see they were doing some really dangerous stuff."
Burial ban blamed for spike in China suicide rates - "Burial has been a tradition in China for thousands of years. But some people apparently have felt so strongly about the recent change banning the practice that there have been a spate of alleged suicides to avoid the new rule... Zheng Shifang, from the village of Luting, was one of the six who committed suicide. She was 83 when she died, choosing to take her own life after village committee staff sawed her coffin – which she kept at home – in half in front of her."
ATHEIST MOBS RIOT OVER FB PHOTO DEEMED OFFENSIVE TO RICHARD DAWKINS - "Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Oxford, England chanting “Empirical evidence supported by controlled experimentation is Great” and burning effigies to Ronald MacDonald... Agnostics failed to riot, but stood on the sidelines cheering on the riot and taking credit for it anyways."
LOOK Scoot turns SGAG squabble into promotion
Do Big Money Bonuses Really Increase Job Performance? - "An incentive can be both a blessing and a curse because while it should motivate us, it can just as easily psych us out. Actual task performance may suffer because we’re obsessing about the money. Also, a bigger prize can make us more tightly focussed, but a tight focus is not useful for some tasks – for example those that involve creativity. Consequently behavioural economist Professor Dan Ariely and colleagues hypothesised that big bonuses might actually decrease people’s performance, and they set out to prove it (Ariely et al., 2004)."
And highly paid politicians...
'Organic' Isn't Clean and It Isn't Toxin-Free - "organic farms produce as much, or more, pollution than conventional farms and that organic products might actually contain more toxins than other foods."
California parents outraged by Pine Valley Middle School's explicit sex ed class - "the one which shocked them most was a picture of a man with a bloody face accompanied by a caption saying, 'A real man loves his woman every day of the month.' One parent said: 'This is horrific. This is unacceptable material.'"
Like some happiness with that? Fast food cues hurt ability to savor experience - "people living in communities with higher prevalence of fast-food restaurants were significantly less able to enjoy pleasurable activities that require savoring, even when controlling for economic factors of the individual and the neighborhood. The study’s authors propose that’s because fast food can incite people to feel more impatient, diminishing their ability to slow down and savour life’s simpler joys."
My fling with Dolly the Dolphin: Writer says lovesick mammal killed herself after six-month affair ended - "Malcolm, from Punta Garda, Florida, believes her death a short time later was a case of suicide and that she voluntarily stopped breathing. The relationship didn't break any laws as bestiality was only banned in Florida 2011. Malcolm has since been married twice but also describes himself as a 'zoophile' and says he has had previous sexual experiences with a dog. He said Margaret Howe Lovatt shouldn't feel any shame over her experience with the dolphin and that humans have a misunderstanding about sexual relationships with animals. "It's extremely upsetting. When my book came out I lost a job at a magazine because of the publicity and complaints from advertisers. "I don't understand why there is seen to be a slippery slope. "There is no comparison between sexual abuse and a sexual relationship with a consenting animal.""
The innate effect of Bias; Naive Realism
The innate effect of Bias
"Research by behavioural economists has clearly demonstrated we are not rational; in fact we are naturally irrational. Deeply embedded biases affect every decision we make, there are conscious factors, learned from experience, subconscious cognitive biases and affective factors including our feelings and emotions at the time the decision is made. The challenge is to accept people as they are and then work rationally within our innate biases; this needs a rational approach to an irrational problem!...
Two biases that cut in when you have an issue that has already cost money and needs more funds committed to prevent potential future losses are loss aversion and Hyperbolic discounting...
Another pair of biases that affect problem solving are first our strong preference for our own creations over other people’s creations; reinforced by what behavioural economists call the ‘IKEA Effect’, the more labour we expend on a project, the more we love the result regardless of its quality. If someone has worked hard on the solution to a problem (or the creation of an estimate) they are innately programmed to love their solution! These are just a few of the biases built into all of us; most people are innately optimistic, over-value their personal skills and capabilities and over-value the advice of distant experts compared to the advice from someone they know well...
Naive realism is the belief that we see reality as it really is4 – objectively and without bias; and that those who don't see things ‘our way’ are either uninformed, or biased . The three "tenets" of naive realism are:
1. That I see entities and events as they are in objective reality, and that my social attitudes, beliefs, preferences, priorities, and the like follow from a relatively dispassionate, unbiased and essentially "unmediated" comprehension of the information or evidence at hand.
2. That other rational social perceivers generally will share my reactions, behaviours, and opinions— provided they have had access to the same information that gave rise to my views, and provided that they too have processed that information in a reasonably thoughtful and open-minded fashion.
3. That the failure of a given individual or group to share my views arises from one of three possible sources: a. the individual or group in question may have been exposed to a different sample of information than I was (in which case, provided that the other party is reasonable and open minded, the sharing or pooling of information should lead us to reach an agreement); b. the individual or group in question may be lazy, irrational, or otherwise unable or unwilling to proceed in a normative fashion from objective evidence to reasonable conclusions; or c. the individual or group in question may be biased (either in interpreting the evidence, or in proceeding from evidence to conclusions) by ideology, self-interest, or some other distorting personal influence.
The reality is my version of the ‘truth’ and your version of the ‘truth’ is as unreliable and biased as everybody else’s.
[Ed: Post-modernism! 1+1=3 is as unreliable and biased as 1+1=2!]
... A person’s current state of emotion can easily overpower rational thinking. If a person is tired, or emotionally stressed for any reason, these negative emotions will affect all of the decisions made regardless of the current decisions relationship to the cause of the emotion. Similarly if a person has just won an important sporting event (important to them, not to you or the world at large), the feeling of being successful and capable of winning will impact decisions and encourage more risky decisions.
In addition to their current emotions, we all store emotion charged memories. These emotions are automatically triggered in situations perceived to be similar to the stored memory."
"Research by behavioural economists has clearly demonstrated we are not rational; in fact we are naturally irrational. Deeply embedded biases affect every decision we make, there are conscious factors, learned from experience, subconscious cognitive biases and affective factors including our feelings and emotions at the time the decision is made. The challenge is to accept people as they are and then work rationally within our innate biases; this needs a rational approach to an irrational problem!...
Two biases that cut in when you have an issue that has already cost money and needs more funds committed to prevent potential future losses are loss aversion and Hyperbolic discounting...
Another pair of biases that affect problem solving are first our strong preference for our own creations over other people’s creations; reinforced by what behavioural economists call the ‘IKEA Effect’, the more labour we expend on a project, the more we love the result regardless of its quality. If someone has worked hard on the solution to a problem (or the creation of an estimate) they are innately programmed to love their solution! These are just a few of the biases built into all of us; most people are innately optimistic, over-value their personal skills and capabilities and over-value the advice of distant experts compared to the advice from someone they know well...
Naive realism is the belief that we see reality as it really is4 – objectively and without bias; and that those who don't see things ‘our way’ are either uninformed, or biased . The three "tenets" of naive realism are:
1. That I see entities and events as they are in objective reality, and that my social attitudes, beliefs, preferences, priorities, and the like follow from a relatively dispassionate, unbiased and essentially "unmediated" comprehension of the information or evidence at hand.
2. That other rational social perceivers generally will share my reactions, behaviours, and opinions— provided they have had access to the same information that gave rise to my views, and provided that they too have processed that information in a reasonably thoughtful and open-minded fashion.
3. That the failure of a given individual or group to share my views arises from one of three possible sources: a. the individual or group in question may have been exposed to a different sample of information than I was (in which case, provided that the other party is reasonable and open minded, the sharing or pooling of information should lead us to reach an agreement); b. the individual or group in question may be lazy, irrational, or otherwise unable or unwilling to proceed in a normative fashion from objective evidence to reasonable conclusions; or c. the individual or group in question may be biased (either in interpreting the evidence, or in proceeding from evidence to conclusions) by ideology, self-interest, or some other distorting personal influence.
The reality is my version of the ‘truth’ and your version of the ‘truth’ is as unreliable and biased as everybody else’s.
[Ed: Post-modernism! 1+1=3 is as unreliable and biased as 1+1=2!]
... A person’s current state of emotion can easily overpower rational thinking. If a person is tired, or emotionally stressed for any reason, these negative emotions will affect all of the decisions made regardless of the current decisions relationship to the cause of the emotion. Similarly if a person has just won an important sporting event (important to them, not to you or the world at large), the feeling of being successful and capable of winning will impact decisions and encourage more risky decisions.
In addition to their current emotions, we all store emotion charged memories. These emotions are automatically triggered in situations perceived to be similar to the stored memory."