Links - 10th February 2015

Why are Korean people so crazy? - Quora - "Something I heard very early on about the difference between Japan and Korea was that the Japanese suppress their emotions, while the Koreans repress theirs. I think the point was that Japan, especially among the younger generation, is relatively calm, the standard of living is relatively high, and people take great pains not to offend others or stir them up. In comparison, in Korea being stirred up and aggravated is pretty much inevitable, but people have to control their reaction, or risked being judged on it."

Jailed for Nonpayment of Child Support; But its Not His Child - "The feminists have ratcheted up the laws against men to such an outrageous level that paternity fraud is not just ignored, but routinely rubber stamped by the courts. Whether one agrees with the concept of child support or not, virtually everyone can agree that jailing men for child support over children who are not theirs is morally wrong. Men are routinely sent to jail for falling behind on paying child support, even though debtors' prisons in the U.S. were mostly eliminated in the mid-nineteenth century... It is brutally unfair as well as sexist towards men, that a mother can decide she does not want a child, and abort the child or place it after being born at a fire station, deserting the child with no consequences. She will never be required to pay child support. A man does not have that option. He cannot even stop the child from being aborted. It takes two people to have sex. Both should be treated equally under the law, instead of forcing men to act as a welfare system for women."

Lenore Skenazy: Eek! A Male! - WSJ - "Last week, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, Timothy Murray, noticed smoke coming out of a minivan in his hometown of Worcester. He raced over and pulled out two small children, moments before the van's tire exploded into flames. At which point, according to the AP account, the kids' grandmother, who had been driving, nearly punched our hero in the face. Why? Mr. Murray said she told him she thought he might be a kidnapper. And so it goes these days, when almost any man who has anything to do with a child can find himself suspected of being a creep. I call it "Worst-First" thinking: Gripped by pedophile panic, we jump to the very worst, even least likely, conclusion first. Then we congratulate ourselves for being so vigilant.Consider the Iowa daycare center where Nichole Adkins works. The one male aide employed there, she told me in an interview, is not allowed to change diapers. "In fact," Ms. Adkins said, "he has been asked to leave the classroom when diapering was happening"... This queasy climate is making men think twice about things they used to do unselfconsciously. A friend of mine, Eric Kozak, was working for a while as a courier. Driving around an unfamiliar neighborhood, he says, "I got lost. I saw a couple kids by the side of the road and rolled down my window to ask, 'Where is such-and-such road?' They ran off screaming""

Did Pedophilia Hysteria Cause Child's Death? - "On Nov. 28, 2002, 2-year-old Abigail Rae died by drowning in a village pond in England. Her death is currently stirring debate because the ongoing inquest revealed an explosive fact. A man passing by was afraid to guide the lost child to safety because he feared being labeled "a pervert"... Last summer, an Illinois man lost an appeal on his conviction as a sex offender for grabbing the arm of a 14-year-old girl. She had stepped directly in front of his car, causing him to swerve in order to avoid hitting her. The 28-year-old Fitzroy Barnaby jumped out his car, grabbed her arm and lectured her on how not to get killed. Nothing more occurred. Nevertheless, that one action made him guilty of "the unlawful restraint of a minor," which is a sexual offense in Illinois. Both the jury and judge believed him. Nevertheless, Barnaby went through years of legal proceedings that ended with his name on a sex offender registry, where his photograph and address are publicly available. He must report to authorities. His employment options are severely limited; he cannot live near schools or parks. Arguably, the law would have punished Barnaby less had he hit the girl or not cared enough to lecture her... The effect on average people in non-extreme situations can be partially gauged through a study conducted by Dr. Heather Piper at Manchester Metropolitan University: "The Problematics of 'Touching' Between Children and Professionals." Piper examined six case-study schools through interviews with teachers, parents and children regarding the propriety of touch. Commentator Josie Appleton reviewed the study, "Reported cases include the teacher who avoided putting a plaster [bandaid] on a child's scraped leg; nursery staff calling a child's mother every time he needed to go to the toilet; a male gym teacher leaving a girl injured in the hall while he waited for a female colleague.""

Votes For Women & Sexual Morality - "Until the work of feminist historians in the 1970’s, most history texts ignored the emphasis placed on sex and morality by the suffragists and suffragettes. The few historians who did mention it ridiculed the suffragettes. For instance, the suffragette slogan ‘Votes for Women and Chastity for Men‘ is seen as an amusing peculiarity by George Dangerfield in the 1930’s and Roger Fulford in the 1950’s and as an example of spinsterish eccentricity by Andrew Rosen in the 1970s. However, the relationship between sexuality and the vote has enjoyed a long history in the annals of women’s suffrage. Both the suffragists and the suffragettes placed women’s franchise within the wider context of sexual politics and took the question of sexuality very earnestly indeed. For some suffrage campaigners such as Millicent Fawcett and Christabel Pankhurst the vote was as much about improving men’s sexual morality as it was about improving women’s working conditions."

The Slaughter Bench of History - "War is mass murder, and yet, in perhaps the greatest paradox in history, war has nevertheless been the undertaker’s worst enemy. Contrary to what the song says, war has been good for something: over the long run, it has made humanity safer and richer... by fighting wars, people have created larger, more organized societies that have reduced the risk that their members will die violently... while war is the worst imaginable way to create larger, more peaceful societies, it is pretty much the only way humans have found... as well as making people safer, the larger societies created by war have also—again, over the long run—made us richer... War has produced bigger societies, ruled by stronger governments, which have imposed peace and created the preconditions for prosperity"

Miss USA runner-up Carrie Prejean's comments on same-sex marriage mirror Obama's - "It's not often that we can check a Miss USA contestant with our Truth-O-Meter. So when Miss California USA Carrie Prejean, the runner-up in the Miss USA competition, likened her much-discussed, pageant-night response to a question about gay marriage to President Barack Obama's beliefs, we decided it was time."
Selective outrage!

What $14 Cocktails Say About Neighborhood Housing Prices - "Call it the $14 Cocktail Rule. D.C.'s Washington City Paper has made that figure shorthand for describing rising demand for services in the city's hotter neighborhoods. That this measure is indexed to the price of cocktails tells you something about the local alt-weekly, but also about the elasticity of demand for alcohol. As it turns out, the relationship between rising housing prices and rising everything-else prices is broader than just what's happening at the bar. A new paper released by the National Bureau of Economic Research susses out the causal link between rising demand for housing and retail prices. In neighborhoods with large house-price movements, retail prices rise accordingly... Further, the report shows, there's a link between high ownership rates and rising retail prices (not just high home prices). "In zip codes with a high homeownership rate, house price increases lead to large increases in retail prices," the study reads, "while in zip codes with the lowest homeownership rates, house price increases actually lead to declines in retail prices."

Protesters arrested after trying to raise Lenin from the dead using holy water

Clifford Chance video: Trainee at top UK law firm uploads 21-minute online rant blaming Charlie Hebdo shootings on non-Muslims - "A trainee lawyer at one of Britain’s top law firms has been forced to apologise after posting a video online in which he blamed the Paris shootings on non-Muslims who “killed our people and raped and pillaged our resources”. Aysh Chaudhry, a 22-year-old whose job at magic circle firm Clifford Chance makes him one of the best-paid graduate employees in the country, accused moderate Muslims of “succumbing to the corrupt values that the kuffar (non-believers) are trying to impose on us” in the wake of the terror attacks that killed 17 in France... Throughout the course of the 21-minute video he refers to Muslims as “superior” to “the kuffar”, calls on viewers to “stop putting freedom on this pedestal” and refers to secular, liberal beliefs as a “bankrupt ideology""

Avoid men and eat plenty of porridge for a long life, says Jessie, 109: Scotland's oldest woman reveals her secrets - "Miss Gallan, who now lives in a care home in Aberdeen, said: 'My secret to a long life has been staying away from men. They're just more trouble than they're worth."

Rabbit breeders tell Pope Francis: 'Rabbits do not have a rampant sex drive' - "Pope Francis’s advice to Catholics that they need not feel an obligation to breed “like rabbits” has drawn the ire of people who know a thing or two about the subject – rabbit breeders. An association of breeders in Germany says that contrary to popular opinion, rabbits do not have a rampant sex drive and that the Pope should have chosen his words more carefully... Erwin Leowsky, the president of the German Rabbit Breeders Association, said the allusion to rabbits’ famed fecundity was “stupid”. "He should really think harder about giving up expressions like that and allow people to use contraception instead. I think it would be much more appropriate than saying such stupid things." The randy reputation of rabbits mostly applied to animals living in the wild, rather than those bred in captivity, Mr Leowsky said."
Offence and grievance culture moves on!

How Orwell's 'Animal Farm' Led A Radical Muslim To Moderation - "It was while in prison, surrounded by several prominent jihadist leaders, that Nawaz realized he wanted to take a different path. He was reading George Orwell's Animal Farm and came to a new understanding of "what happens when somebody tries to create a utopia"... He says he began to see that it's "impossible to create a utopia.""

How a crazy scientist duped America into believing vitamin C cures colds - "Part of it has to do with the fact that vitamin C is rarely harmful, so there's been little impetus to intervene. "There’s a lot of misinformation out there on vitamin C because it’s safe," says Heather Mangieri, a nutritionist working with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics... Pauling is the only person to ever win two unshared Nobel prizes. In 1949, Pauling and his team studying sickle cell anemia established it as a genetic disease. And he was also, arguably, the person most responsible for the great vitamin C myth... A Cochrane review of nearly 30 studies looking at people with colds taking the normal daily dose of vitamin C found that it reduced colds’ length by 8 percent. This means if your cold lasts five days, it might be shortened by about 10 hours."