Links - 23rd May 2015

More Than 50% of College Students Felt Suicidal - "A comprehensive study of suicidal thinking among college students found more than half of the 26,000 surveyed had suicidal thoughts at some point during their lifetime. The web-based survey conducted in spring 2006 used separate samples of undergraduate and graduate students from 70 colleges and universities across the country. Of the 15,010 undergraduates, average age 22: 55 percent had ever thought of suicide"
Maybe this just shows that considering suicide in and of itself isn't so unusual

Amos Yee charged under the Protection from Harassment Act - "According to section 298, it is an offence to insult someone else with the intention of wounding the religious feelings of that person, meaning if I tell you in the face that I do not think it’s physically possible for Jesus Christ to walk on water and the Bible is a silly pack of lies, and you’re offended by the remark, it means that your ‘religious feelings’ have been hurt, and I’m liable to get charged under the Penal Code although I’m merely presenting an argument based on current scientific knowledge... Has FHM been charged for depicting Jesus with a shotgun?... The more intriguing charge, however, is the one under the protection from harassment act. My idea of harassment is an obsessed fan stalking me outside my doorstep, and sending death threats to my spouse out of jealousy. The victim of the act here is, specifically, ME. Who, exactly, was Amos Yee ‘harassing’? Did he send his link to specific people and force them to watch it? Was he causing trouble to a dead man by loitering around his casket threatening to jump on it? Did he go up to the Lee family and prance around with a party hat and a trumpet going ‘Hooray your dad is dead!’? If the harassment charge is equivalent to ‘insulting’ a fellow human because you have the ‘intention’ of doing so and it causes them ‘distress’, then we’ll have to round up a whole bunch of attention-seeking netizens and bloggers who so much as declare that a minister’s wife looks like a sack of shit, or influencers attacking other influencers with obscenities or death threats. Hell, I’ll charge the Pizza Hut guy for calling me a pink fat person because he hurt my feelings and I can’t sleep because I’m crying all night long. Amos’ parents have been called ‘useless’ by Facebookers because they can’t control their kid. Maybe they should take action against such unfair accusations as well."

College guide bans 'lady' and 'history' as offensive words - Telegraph - "A COLLEGE has banned the use of more than 40 "offensive" words and phrases, including "normal couple" and "slaving over a hot stove", under equal opportunities rules that staff and students must follow. Stockport College, Greater Manchester, has also outlawed "taking the mickey", "history" and "lady", claiming that they are no longer appropriate in a new century. Among the groups that college officials claim could be offended by words on the proscribed list are women, homosexuals and ethnic minorities. A policy document entitled Equal Opportunities - Policy into Practice also says students should not risk upsetting mentally ill people through the use of words such as "mad", "manic" and "crazy". The expression "slaving over a hot stove" is ruled to be inappropriate because it "minimises the horror and oppression of the slave trade"... Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, condemned the guidelines. "It is amazing that academics are still indulging in this sort of nonsense. It is political correctness of the worst kind," he said. "They should be concentrating on teaching their students, instead of trying to ban words which any ordinary person would regard as an everyday part of the English language." The row comes days after a Job Centre in Walsall refused to accept an advert in which an employer said he was seeking a "hard-working" recruit. Jonathan Stevenson, the centre's manager, claimed that the phrase could offend the disabled, but was forced to accept the advert after David Blunkett, the Education and Employment Secretary, intervened to halt what his aides described as "insulting nonsense"... The expression "taking the mickey" is described as "anti-Irish", while the use of "normal couple" is questioned, with the guidelines asking: "How do you define normal?" "Lady" and "gentleman" are said to have "class implications". "History", "postman" and "chairman" are all deemed to be sexist. The list also bans the words "queer" and "cripple", except where gay and disabled people have "reclaimed" them. References to "the blind" or "the deaf" are banned, with "visually-impaired" or "hearing-impaired" recommended as alternatives"

Malaysian universities could be like Oxford soon, says Idris Jusoh - "Second Education Minister Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh says that Malaysian universities are not far from becoming world-class institutions like the University of Oxford, since they have already attracted over 135,000 international students... Bukit Bendera MP Zairil Khir Johari added that the majority of international students in Malaysia are from countries with universities inferior to ours, such as Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Nigeria and Bangladesh"

IKEA Transgender Ad Upsets LGBT, Trans Communities - "A “disrespectful” IKEA transgender ad has sparked outrage among LGBT and transgender communities after it aired in Thailand, with many feeling the spot reinforces negative and harmful stereotypes. The IKEA transgender ad aired late last month and early this month, and the premise — put forth by a retailer that was one of the first to embrace the LGBT community in advertising — uses humor about a trans person in the closet as the main joke."
Moral of the story: ignore the LGBT and Trans Communities since whatever you do they will get upset anyway

Cannibalism in the news: What does human flesh taste like? - "In his 1931 book Jungle Ways, American adventurer and journalist William Buehler Seabrook provided the world’s most detailed written description of the taste of human flesh. Seabrook noted that, in raw form, human meat looks like beef, but slightly less red, with pale yellow fat. When roasted, the meat turned grayish, as would lamb or veal, and smelled like cooked beef. As for the taste, Seabrook wrote, “It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal.”"

More Than Half of Medical Advice on ‘Dr. Oz’ Lacks Proof or Contradicts Best Available Science: Study

ALERT: A Canadian Guy Has Created A "Poutine Tornado"

Bomoh rapes bride-to-be instead of restoring her virginity - "A bride-to-be was so worried that her fiancé would reject her if he found out she was not a virgin that she sought a bomoh’s help to fix her hymen. However, the 53-year-old bomoh decided to take advantage of her naivety instead. He made the 22-year-old woman send explicit videos of herself to him and forced himself on her as part of the “healing ritual”... “She claimed the bomoh had put a spell on her by holding her hand, which made her feel naughty”"

Management of the transgender adolescent. - "Most children aged 5 to 12 years diagnosed as having GID do not persist in having GID as adolescents; rather, most become homosexual or bisexual adolescents and adults."
More on: Studies and Reports: Transgender Children | Sex matters.

Transgender kids: Have we gone too far? - "Gender confusion is often temporary. About three-quarters of little kids who have issues with their gender – boys who want to be princesses, girls who throw their dresses in the garbage – will be comfortable with it by adolescence, according to Dr. Zucker. (Many of them will grow up to be gay or bi.) Gender confusion can also be a handy label for whatever ails a child (or her family). That’s why Dr. Zucker takes a watch-and-wait approach. He even advises parents of princessy six-year-olds to say, “You’re not a girl. You’re a boy.” And in the hotly politicized world of gender politics, that makes him, in many people’s eyes, a dangerous reactionary... social norms have dramatically changed. It is now fashionable to embrace your diverse child. Parents who encourage their kids to change gender “are socially rewarded as wonderful and accepting”... Disturbingly, data on long-term outcomes for transgender kids are scarce. No one is tracking the evidence on puberty-blocking intervention either. “We are doing major interventions and we have shockingly little idea what the outcomes are,” Ms. Dreger says. You get the sense that what we have is not so much a rational approach to a psychosocial issue as a radical ideological experiment. Here’s more unwelcome news from Ms. Dreger. A child’s gender issue may merely be a symptom of other family problems. “The dirty little secret is that many of these families have big dysfunctional issues. When you get the clinicians over a beer, they’ll tell you the truth. A lot of the parents aren’t well in terms of their mental health. They think that once the child transitions, all their problems will magically go away, but that’s not really where the stress is located.” Clinicians won’t say these things publicly, she says, because they don’t want to sound as if they’re blaming gender problems on screwed-up families."

Empowering Versus Objectifying: How Power Matters - "when a male creator chooses to put a female character in a sexualized costume, pose, or situation, they have all the power over that character, so unless they make it clear that their character is the one with the power in the situation, the character is being objectified."
Fictional characters can't consent. Comics are rape.
Comment: "Sooo.. if a male artist creates a sexy female character, he has to provide evidence that the character would want this? What about female artists, do they have to do the same? Or this only a problem with male artists? Cause this sounds like male artists + sexy female character = bad. Female artist +sexy female character = good."
"Can we get a trigger warning when something is so fucking stupid that it'll give you PTSD?"