Links - 11th June 2015

Non, « Charlie Hebdo » n’est pas obsédé par l’islam - "Pour apporter une réponse raisonnée à cette question, nous analysons les 523 « unes » du journal de janvier 2005 (n°655) au 7 janvier 2015 (n°1177). Si les « unes » de Charlie Hebdo ne résument pas à elles seules le journal, elles en sont toutefois la vitrine, que même des non-lecteurs peuvent voir en devanture des kiosques. Le faible nombre d’abonnés que comptait Charlie Hebdo avant les assassinats laisse d’ailleurs supposer que c’est sur la base de ses « unes » que le journal a été accusé d’islamophobie. De cette analyse, il ressort plusieurs enseignements. Quatre grands thèmes émergent des « unes » de Charlie Hebdo : la politique ; les personnalités médiatiques du sport et du spectacle ; l’actualité économique et sociale ; et la religion. Sur les 523 « unes » parues au cours des dix dernières années, près des deux tiers (336) concernent la politique. L’actualité économique et sociale vient ensuite (85 « unes »), puis les personnalités médiatiques du sport et du spectacle (42). La religion n’est le thème que de 7 % des « unes » (38)... Parmi les 38 « unes » ayant pour cible la religion, plus de la moitié vise principalement la religion catholique (21) et moins de 20 % se moquent principalement de l’islam (7)... Au total, de 2005 à 2015, seulement 1,3 % des « unes » se sont moquées principalement des musulmans... Ce qu’il faut expliquer, donc, ce n’est pas pourquoi Charlie Hebdo était islamophobe, mais pourquoi, de nos jours, seuls des extrémistes se revendiquant de l’islam cherchent à museler un journal qui se moque – entre beaucoup d’autres choses – de leur religion."
Keywords: historically attack right wing

Asian Americans lack “good character” - "Asian Americans are not seen as plausible leaders. Especially by the established oligarchs, who would prefer their own offspring to inherit the mantles of power. Asian males in particular exhibit a “penalty” in the dating game. White females perceive them to be sexually impotent (on average), and for better or worse the opinions of white females as to who is a plausible leader in our society is very telling. If American women won’t want have to have sex with them, then why would the broader society see them as creditable leaders? This is related to something Josh Harkinson at Mother Jones pointed out recently: Asians are far underrepresented in top management in relation to their representation among rank and file workers, especially in technical positions, in Silicon Valley"
If the under-represented 'minority' were women, Blacks or Hispanics...

Chinese billionaire pays £5million to hire Japanese porn star as his 'personal assistant' for 15 years - "In a move which echoes hit 90s film Pretty Woman, the mysterious businessman has hired Rola Misaki as his personal assistant for the next 15 years. The 22-year-old, who is half-Russian and half-Japanese, recently appeared in Beijing with the man -who was wearing a mask at a public event... He is said to have secured the star with a 15-year acting contract to help develop her career as well as being his personal assistant. But the display of affection at the recent event caused many to presume that the contract also includes an 'intimate relations' clause. Misaki was born in 1992 and due to her cute features quickly found fame on Youtube with a series of revealing videos and photos. She made her AV debut under the name of Rola Takizawa in 2012 with the Prestige label. With a D-cup chest and slender frame, she never garnered a huge following in Japan, but is loved in China. Her following on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, is more than 4.8 million. She has been dubbed Japan's 'National Treasure Beauty' as well as 'Number 1 men's goddess'."

Gay Manifesto - "We Shall Sodomize Your Sons" ["gay" fantasy come true?] - "This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor.
We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us."

How to get chicks without being a jerk - "All of which raises the question of what reasonable, inoffensive advice on wooing women would look like. Clarisse Thorn, author of “Confessions of a Pickup Artist Chaser,” has put a great deal of thought into the question. “Ethics was a central question in my book,” she told me in an email. “ It’s a very complicated topic, but I think that ethical pickup artistry boils down to using ‘tactics’ that are mutual rather than adversarial.” There is plenty in the pickup artist, or PUA, community that is “ sleazy and misogynistic,” she says, but there are also self-help aspects that seem relatively harmless and legitimately therapeutic. “Some cognitive-behavioral therapists suggest that patients with social anxiety keep a log of successful social encounters in order to build up self-confidence — and PUAs sometimes do this by writing what they call ‘Field Reports,’” she says."

Make Parking a Cinch with This Parking Guide Infographic

La Communauté des français à Singapour - "Le nombre de français à Singapour a plus que doublé depuis 2007 avec notamment un bond de 20% en 2011. On apprends également que près d’un tiers des français ont moins de 18 ans et que 35,8% des français ont entre 26 et 40 ans"

fuckyeaheurope - "a blog of lovely places in europe. warning: this blog will just worsen your depression."

The three most unattractive women’s hairstyles (according to Japanese men) - "3 – Straight bangs
2 – Very short
1 – Bob cut"

Western Wives, Chinese Husbands - "I wonder if foreign women realize what great husbands Chinese men make. I think they're an undiscovered, valuable resource"

Unicorns of Social Psychology - "List of failures to replicate classic social psychology studies...
self-fulfilling prophecy effects do occur. They just do not occur very often or very powerfully. Rosenthal himself (Rosenthal & Rubin, 1978) found that almost 2/3 of experiments produce no statistically significant evidence of self-fulfilling prophecy"

Here are the perfect male and female bodies, according to men and women

Cartoon: Our Ancestors Had Tails…

Butthurt Report Form, Internet Version

S’porean self-proclaimed influencer has tough time convincing herself with her own status updates | New Nation - "Eubel said she made the stunning realisation that there exists a record of all her social media status updates online and when they are compiled across time, they revealed contradictions in what she said in her status updates and she is depressed about it."

Kristy Love with 48NN breasts documents her struggle in TLC's Strange Love - "Kristy's breasts weigh a vast 15.8lbs each, and combined, tip the scales at 31.6lbs - the weight of an average toddler. On one hand, they present a hazard, particularly in the kitchen. 'Sometimes they get in the pot, sometimes they get in the pan, sometimes they get caught on the burner,' she admits. On the other hand, they are mighty useful. Kristy's cleavage is so deep that she uses it in absence of a handbag, wedging her perfume, cell phone, car keys and driving licence between her breasts... Kristy makes an much as $1,300 daily, treating clients to the 'Happy Man Works', which involves 'squishing' and 'smothering' them with her breasts. Some clients even enjoy 'being hit over the head' with them, or have her glide over their bodies covered in oil. 'I have to keep an eye out when I'm squashing someone,' she explained. 'I look at their feet and their fingers to make sure there is still movement there and they’re still breathing.'"

Poor Little Rich Women - NYTimes.com - "I met the women I came to call the Glam SAHMs, for glamorous stay-at-home-moms, of my new habitat. My culture shock was immediate and comprehensive. In a country where women now outpace men in college completion, continue to increase their participation in the labor force and make gains toward equal pay, it was a shock to discover that the most elite stratum of all is a glittering, moneyed backwater... The worldwide ethnographic data is clear: The more stratified and hierarchical the society, and the more sex segregated, the lower the status of women"

Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government - "Why does public conflict over societal risks persist in the face of compelling and widely accessible scientific evidence? We conducted an experiment to probe two alternative answers: the “Science Comprehension Thesis” (SCT), which identifies defects in the public’s knowledge and reasoning capacities as the source of such controversies; and the “Identity-protective Cognition Thesis” (ICT) which treats cultural conflict as disabling the faculties that members of the public use to make sense of decision-relevant science. In our experiment, we presented subjects with a difficult problem that turned on their ability to draw valid causal inferences from empirical data. As expected, subjects highest in Numeracy — a measure of the ability and disposition to make use of quantitative information — did substantially better than less numerate ones when the data were presented as results from a study of a new skin-rash treatment. Also as expected, subjects’ responses became politically polarized — and even less accurate — when the same data were presented as results from the study of a gun-control ban. But contrary to the prediction of SCT, such polarization did not abate among subjects highest in Numeracy; instead, it increased. This outcome supported ICT, which predicted that more Numerate subjects would use their quantitative-reasoning capacity selectively to conform their interpretation of the data to the result most consistent with their political outlooks. We discuss the theoretical and practical significance of these findings."
For both Liberal Democrats and Conservative Republicans, better Numeracy skills did not help them reach the correct conclusions on an ideologically-charged issue - rationality is cancelled out by ideology/emotion.
One implication is that technocracy is not necessarily effective - unless you can find ideologically neutral (or at least ideologically diverse) technocrats