Links - 26th February 2015

Man with Emirates Tattoo Enjoys $25,000 of Free Upgrades - "Glaswegian-born McGinlay is an English teacher in Thailand, but is treated like a celebrity when he boards an Emirates plane. The frequent flyer is regularly upgraded too the more luxury business and first class, and when crew find out about his tattoo, they often ask to pose for photos with McGinlay. Staff have also told him that his photo sits proudly on the wall of famous celebrities – alongside the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Michael Jackson – in the company’s Dubai headquarters... McGinlay said that his friends back in the UK are less than impressed with his luxury antics, admitting that on a photo posted on social media of his first-class boarding pass and a glass of Moet, a friend commented: “I hope you choke.”"

Built on Sand: Singapore and the New State of Risk

Canada Lets Makayla Sault Die of Leukemia Over Religious Sensitivity - "On Monday, Makayla Sault, an 11-year-old from Ontario and member of the Mississauga tribe of the New Credit First Nation, died from acute lymphoblastic leukemia after suffering a stroke the previous day. This would normally not be big news in Canada or the U.S.—except for the fact that Makayla's death was probably preventable and thus unnecessary. Makayla died not only from leukemia, but from faith—the faith of her parents, who are pastors. They not only inculcated her with Christianity, but, on religious grounds, removed her from chemotherapy to put her in a dubious institute of “alternative medicine” in Florida... Her doctors say that if she had stayed on chemotherapy and standard treatment, she would have had a 75 percent chance of survival.Makayla went off chemotherapy because the Canadian government and its child protective services refused to override the parents’ and child’s wishes to discontinue treatment; after supposedly having a vision of Jesus while in the hospital, Makayla had become convinced that chemotherapy was killing her. "
Is this so different from euthanising children?

Why Night Owls Are More Intelligent Than Morning Larks

The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss - "heterosexual wives are more likely than husbands to initiate divorce. Social scientists have struggled to explain the discrepancy, variously attributing it to the sexual revolution; to women’s financial independence; to men’s failure to keep modern wives happy. Intriguingly, in Norway and Sweden, where registered partnerships for same-sex couples have been in place for about two decades (full-fledged marriage was introduced several years ago), research has found that lesbians are twice as likely as gay men to split up. If women become dissatisfied even when married to other women, maybe the problem with marriage isn’t men. Maybe women are too particular. Maybe even women don’t know what women want. These are the kinds of things that we will be able to tease out... gay and lesbian couples were fairer in their dealings with one another than straight couples, both in intent and in practice. The lesbians in the study were almost painfully egalitarian—in some cases putting money in jars and splitting everything down to the penny... lesbian couples seemed to take the practice to extremes: “It was almost like ‘my kitty, your litter'”... in all couples, the person with the higher income had more authority and decision-making power. This was least true for lesbians; truer for heterosexuals; and most true for gay men. Somehow, putting two men together seemed to intensify the sense that “money talks”... Even as they are more egalitarian in their parenting styles, same-sex parents resemble their heterosexual counterparts in one somewhat old-fashioned way: a surprising number establish a division of labor whereby one spouse becomes the primary earner and the other stays home... for married heterosexual parents, happiness tends to be U-shaped: high at the beginning of marriage, then dipping to a low, then high again. What happens in that low middle is child-rearing... women may have a “stronger general sensitivity to the quality of relationships.” Meaning maybe women are just picky, and when you have two women, you have double the pickiness. So perhaps the real threat to marriage is: women... in the decade since same-sex partnerships became legal, heterosexual marriage rates had increased 10.7 percent in Denmark, 12.7 percent in Norway, and 28.8 percent in Sweden. Divorce rates had dropped in all three countries... When, in the 1970s and early 1980s, Pepper Schwartz asked couples about their sex lives, she arrived at perhaps her most explosive finding: non-monogamy was rampant among gay men, a whopping 82 percent of whom reported having had sex outside their relationship. Slightly more than one-third of gay-male couples felt that monogamy was important; the other two-thirds said that monogamy was unimportant or that they were neutral on the topic. In a funny way, Schwartz says, her findings suggested that same-sex unions (like straight ones) aren’t necessarily about sex. Some gay men made a point of telling her they loved their partners but weren’t physically attracted to them. Others said they wanted to be monogamous but were unsupported in that wish, by their partner, gay culture, or both."

vivre l'écureuil - "1. What does “trigender” mean?
Trigender is a non-binary gender choice that liberates me from having to decide one just one gender. It means that I am simultaneously male, female, and neither.
4. Why squirrelkin?
I’ve already answered this one so I’m just going to copy and paste it from the other post.
- I’m a squirrelkin because I believe I was intended to be a squirrel, but for some reason, there was a mishap and I ended up assuming the form of a human.
- How do I know I was intended to be a squirrel? There are lots of reasons. One, I only like eating nuts. I eat nuts throughout the day and I also plant them sometimes. When I laugh, people tell me that it sounds like a squirrel. I often find myself resisting the urge to scale trees whenever I go to the park because I know the general population doesn’t understand otherkin. But I love climbing trees. I’m also a very fast runner.
- Astrally, every time I astral project, I take the form of a squirrel. This was the tipping point for me. That’s when I knew I was truly meant to be a squirrel.
5. What are headmates?
Headmates are separate individuals that inhabit the same body as I do.
7. Is this a satire account?
No. I might be a little sarcastic sometimes but I assure you, I’m as real as they come.
8. What caused you to have PTSD?
When I was younger, I went on a field trip to a farm. There was a chicken coop and at my young age, I was very fascinated by chickens. If I weren’t a squirrelkin, I’d probably be a chickenkin. Just to put into perspective how much I love chickens. So anyway, we were at the farm, and this guy just came up and picked up the chicken. He seemed to touch the chicken in inappropriate ways. And an egg fell out. And then the chicken died a little while later. As I mentioned before, this may have been a dream, but it was still very real for me. And now I cry when people are cruel to animals and it really puts me on edge too."

Healthy eating can turn into an obsession - "every time she received compliments for her discipline to eat healthily, her heart sank. “There were so many things I restricted myself from to adhere to my ritual. I ate only plain food — no sauce, oil or salt. I looked healthy but I was really miserable,” she recalled. For the last two years, Ms Lim, now 20, struggled with what doctors and registered dietitians here describe as an unhealthy desire to eat only pure or “clean” food, which may lead to poor physical, social and emotional health. Some experts refer to the condition as orthorexia nervosa, a little-researched disorder... She has seen a handful of cases where her patients are obsessed with healthy eating, such as taking only organic juices or raw vegetables... For Ms Lim, “healthy eating” at one point meant restricting herself to 30 grams of carbohydrates — just slightly more than one slice of bread — each day, and scrutinising online menus to ensure restaurants serve “healthy” dishes worth her calories before agreeing to attend social outings... “Planning my daily meals and workouts began to take over my mind in a way that made me very miserable. I refused dinner gatherings that would disrupt my regime,” Ms Lim said... While acknowledging that the screening criteria for orthorexia is ambiguous, health experts raised some red flags: Cutting out major food sources such as red meat, gluten, dairy and sugar; spending excessive amounts of time, say three or more hours a day, preparing specific types of food; scrutinising food labels and menus; and being fixated with calorie-counting, such as feeling guilty when they consume five to 10 calories more than their daily quota. SGH’s Dr Lee said: “People with orthorexia are often resistant to advice because they believe they know what a healthy diet is, and that their diet is healthy.” Dr Wang said it is important for those with eating disorders to be around a “healthy community”. “By that, I mean family and friends who take a balanced and holistic approach towards food and life.”"
More simply, you might describe people who cut out entire food sources as cranks

Ship Your Enemies Glitter revenge website sells at auction only days after launch - "Mathew Carpenter auctioned off Ship Your Enemies Glitter for a tidy sum of $85,000 this week after launching the site last week and becoming swamped with orders... Bidding hit $70,000 within hours of the site, which referred to glitter as "the herpes of the craft world," being put up for sale, according to the Guardian. It stalled and then shot up another $15,000 to the final asking price. Carpenter claims he earned $20,000 in the short time his site was accepting orders, according to the auction listing. More than 2.5 million people visited the website in its first four days."

Butts Versus Boobs: Which Do Guys Really Prefer? - "Pornhub Insights (behind one of the web’s most highly trafficked porn site’s YouPorn) calculated data on this point based on searches of butts and breasts in countries around the world, and ultimately concluded it has to do with how close to the equator someone lives. Butts came out the winner in places like South America, Latin America, and Africa. The one exception to this is Canada—our neighbors to the North apparently really appreciate a shapely butt. In the European Union, however, it was breasts that came out on top in countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. What’s the verdict in America? While it varies by state, butts came out the winner overall. No real surprise there, considering our recent obsession with all things booty. Researches at the University of Buenos Aires in 2013 asked heterosexual men the same question—breasts versus butts—in a study and found that 59 percent of men preferred butts, while 38.5 percent preferred breasts. What is particularly interesting about their findings is that rarely did men attest that both traits equally contributed to a woman’s attractiveness, with only 2 percent responding that that was true for them. So it seems men really do fall into one of these buckets after all. But what does it actually mean to be a butt guy or a boob guy? A 1968 U.S. study (yeah, we’re going way back) asked 95 male college students which silhouette of a woman they found to be the most attractive. Men who preferred “large” breasts were found to have “a tendency to date frequently, to have masculine interests, and to read sports magazines…large-breast preference was related to a need for heterosexual contact and for exhibitionism (saying witty things and being the center of attention).” On the other side of the spectrum, men who preferred large butts were “characterized by a need for order (neatness, organization, orderliness)…Those who preferred the largest buttocks figure tend to be business majors…and tend not to be psychologically minded. In social situations, they are dependent and given to self-abasement (guilty, self-blaming). Their value orientation tends not to be stoic in nature.”"