Links - 30th June 2015

30 cent satay at Geylang Bahru

In Greek crisis, Germany should learn from its fiscal past - "Unhappily, it has not learned the costs of a mad adherence to fiscal orthodoxy, despite the fact that its prosperity is rooted in the decision of its World War II adversaries to allow West Germany’s postwar government to write off half of its debts"

University union officer who wrote 'kill all white men’ tweet will remain in post - Telegraph
"Equality" = killing all white men and retaining your job, while making remarks about women (e.g. Tim Hunt) gets you fired

The Illiberal Persecution of Tim Hunt - "The response to Hunt is way more archaic than what Hunt said. Sure, his views might be a bit pre-women's lib, pre-1960s. But the tormenting and sacking of people for what they think and say is pre-modern. It's positively Inquisitorial. The irony is too much to handle: Hunt is railed against for expressing an old-fashioned view, yet the railers against him do something infinitely more old-fashioned: they expel from public life someone they judge to have committed heresy. Kick him out. Strip him of his titles. Mock his misfortune. "Savour the moment." How awfully ironic that the Royal Society, which played a key role in propelling Britain from medievalism to modernity, is now being asked to behave in a medieval fashion and send into the academic wilderness a heretic among its number. The Hunt incident is quite terrifying. For what we have here is a university, under pressure from an intolerant mob, judging a professor's fitness for office by his personal thoughts, his idea of humour. Profs should be judged by one thing alone: their depth of knowledge. It shouldn't matter one iota if they are sexist, stupid, unfunny, religious, uncouth, ugly, or whatever. All that should matter is whether they have the brainpower to do the job at hand. UCL and the mob's hounding of Hunt echoes the university of the pre-Enlightenment era, when only those who were 100 percent Good Catholics had a hope in hell of getting a job... In effectively dumping Hunt, UCL is sending the message that it will not tolerate deviant thinking. Oxford University did something similar last year when it cancelled a debate on abortion (which I was due to speak at) at the behest of an angry mob of feminists. The management of the London School of Economics gave the nod to the disbanding of its student rugby team for the crime of distributing a rude leaflet. In the U.S., Columbia has indulged the mattress girl, allowing her to defame both a man and campus life more broadly. UVa banned fraternities in response to what turned out to be an utterly made-up rape. Even the notorious Laura Kipnis case is not a simple case of mad, intolerant students trying to shut down an outspoken academic, but rather has been facilitated by educational structures themselves: in this case the federal Title IX rules dealing with gender issues on campus."

Rise of the 'upskirt perverts' - "the alarming rise in cases seems to mirror an expansion of an online social upskirt culture... Forensic psychiatrist Tommy Tan of Novena Psychiatry Clinic said most clients who compulsively take upskirt shots have depression or other psychiatric conditions."
"online social upskirt culture"?!

10 Comic Book Characters Whose Powers Are Actually Pretty Disgusting - "Heavy Flo is a villain who has appeared in the Savage Dragon comics. And her power? Well, her power is the ability to forcefully fire massive spouts of menstrual blood from her lady parts at her opponents. That’s right, what you’re seeing in the above image is a fat woman weaponising her periods for evil-doings (and an unfortunate victim receiving it full force in his face)."

The Revolt Against the Masses and the Roots of Modern Liberalism - "Who really won the 60s? Not the hippies but the bureaucrats who absorbed bohemian language in service of govt. programs"

Liberals and the Illiberal Left - "even as Chait’s critics dismissed the reality of political correctness he decried, real world examples pile up—some absurd, others ominous. In the absurd column comes this from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York: Professors and other employees at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center have been forbidden from addressing students and prospective students with the title “Mr.” and “Ms.” because, campus leaders say, the terms may be offensive... In the ominous column, consider this chart from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education of attempts by students to ban speakers from campus, by means up through and including violent disruption. As FIRE notes, not only are disinvitation incidents on campus rising, but so too is the “success rate” for such incidents. FIRE statistics indicate that disinvitation incidents are almost three times as likely to target speakers perceived as conservative (including those, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who would angrily disavow such a label for themselves) as those perceived as liberal or left. The campus left is reviving, and liberal university administrators are surrendering to them... political correctness is a weapon deployed by leftists against liberals. Its political effect in the larger political context is to make liberals look hesitant and weak... America’s most effective liberals—from Harry Truman to Rahm Emanuel—have known how and when to defy the illiberal left, whether that illiberal left was communist or Third Worldist or, as it is today, infatuated with the jargon of “intersectionality.” The liberals who couldn’t or wouldn’t or didn’t have been dragged toward the same marginality that has always befallen the hard left in America—and always will. Republicans have suffered greatly over the past six years from their visible terror of their more extreme associates. The evolution toward a more responsible Republicanism remains incomplete, but is visibly under way. Now it seems to be the turn of liberals and Democrats to veer off into their own ideological fever-swamps"

Classical Liberalism vs. Modern Liberalism - "I also agree with Wolfe that equality is a core value of classical liberalism, but not as he means it. True liberal equality is not income equality; nor is it merely equality of liberty or equality under the law. The first would require continuous violent state interference with voluntary exchange, while the other two are inadequate in themselves. By equality, I mean what Roderick Long calls, per Locke, “equality of authority.” For Locke a state of equality is one in which “all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another, there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank . . . should also be equal one amongst another, without subordination or subjection . . . .” But now I must part ways with Wolfe because he has an utterly self-defeating idea of how to secure everyone’s mastery over his or her own one’s destiny: the welfare state. Judging by the history and nature of the state, we must conclude that Wolfe’s program would lead not to liberation but rather to subjugation of the individual... If the alternative we face is between grappling with market forces and trusting a ruling elite to orchestrate just social outcomes, anyone concerned with autonomy and equality should choose the market. A benevolent, peaceful state is not on the menu."

Museum of Selfies - "This is a project that started when my friend aka. right hand and I went to the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen.
I took a picture for fun and liked how this simple thing could change their character and give their facial expression a whole new meaning."

Send migrants home to make room for refugees says European Commission - "Only 39 pc of migrants who were not granted asylum in the EU were returned to their home countries in 2014."
"Taking into account deaths at sea, above 50% of those who make the journey stay in the eu"

The late Roman Empire was not the twilight of popular myth - "I am reminded of something a lady who knew a great deal about the Middle East said to me at the time of Rowan Williams’s now famous Sharia Law speech. She told me she had had women ringing her up all day, all saying the same thing: “Doesn’t the Archbishop realise that we came to Britain in order to get away from the oppression of Sharia? And now the very person who should be resisting Sharia is trying to force us back into it.”"

Bishop warns of 'Islamic areas' - "Islamic extremism has turned some communities into no-go areas for people of a different faith or race, a Church of England bishop has said. The Bishop of Rochester, the Right Reverend Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, said non-Muslims may find it difficult to live or work in some places He said there was "hostility" in those areas and described the government's multicultural policies as divisive."

Threats to 'no-go areas' bishop - "A bishop who claimed Islamic extremism has turned some communities into no-go areas for non-Muslims has received threats against himself and his family... "I deeply regret any hurt and do not wish to cause offence to anyone, let alone my Muslim friends. "But unless we diagnose the malaise from which we all suffer we shall not be able to discover the remedy.""

Marble Slab Creamery apologize to Muslim for their "Ramadhan Special" - "We have received some feedback and suggestions from the public that our promotion named "Ramadhan Special" at the Kallang Wave, Bugis+ and Causeway Point outlet is misleading to the Muslim community with the use of the word "Ramadhan" because we are not halal certified. We apologize sincerely for this negligence on our part and the bad use of the word. The promotion was done in good faith and was never meant to mislead nor to show any disrespect to the Muslim community, and we are really sorry about the inconvenience. The posters have been taken down with immediate effect. We will also like to clarify that none of our current MSC outlets are halal certified, but it is in our pipeline to do so for 2016. Thanks for your understanding"
Comments: "ramadhan special means promo for festive season lor..like that cny promo cannot sell to malays only for chinese...make sense ????"
"Ish it just moi or the current generation of peace and harmony ish becoming more radical and sensitive?
The generation that moi grew up with seem to be more carefree and more tolerance about such thing.
Or as our society become more and more world class under the great leadership of the higher mrotals, sinkie in general are becoming more and more unhappy and gloomy. So all the small small thing whether ish life or religion or culture or watsoever will easily irritate them."