Links - 5th June 2015

Theatre review: Kitschy Singapura: The Musical barely does Singapore history justice - "Singapura just cannot decide what Singapore story it wants to tell. Does it want to be a sweeping historical epic, slathering on the facts and numbers and squeezing in every historical checkpoint it can manage? Does it want to be the story of an ordinary Singaporean family, struggling to make ends meet? Or does it want to be a love story between a Singaporean girl and a British soldier? Or perhaps it wants to be Lee Kuan Yew's story, the way an obliquely named "Man In White" drifts across the stage? One could ambitiously declare that the answer is all of the above, but the result is that the sprawling musical suffers from a horrendous lack of focus, stumbling down paths it has no time to flesh out... The creative team interviewed dozens of real-life Singaporeans for their stories, but it hardly feels as if these tales were given justice, because they had no proper vehicle to carry them. During a scene on the Hock Lee Bus Riots, various ensemble members narrated brief stories of the various "ordinary people" who had been injured or killed. But it felt tacked on, as though they were obliged to include a story or two to prove that real people were involved, after which they were quickly forgotten and left behind... Singapura took the very specific and made it even more obscure, piling on the facts so thick and heavy it felt like a secondary school history lesson forced into the structure of a musical... To attempt to shoehorn dense paragraphs of political reasoning or complex racial politics into a musical makes it look like a retelling of Singapore history Punch and Judy style - hitting the audience over the head with over-simplified slogans and platitudes until it physically hurts... Some lyrics sounded like they had been lifted from a Social Studies textbook and coerced into a rhyme scheme... But what was perhaps the most jarring was Singapura's predominantly Filipino cast poorly mimicking the complex creole of Singlish with the token "lah". This was, at its best, problematic and at its worst, in poor taste. An audience can smell token authenticity from a mile away, and while I recognise the enormous effort to sound vaguely Singaporean, the result is so distracting I would rather have listened to their original accents instead, or even General American, which should be in the repertoire of most trained actors. It would have been the more honest attempt."

Gamergate supporter Doxxed by 16 Year old Girl who wanted to "Be a good feminist".

SJW doxx, threaten and harass innocent man, says it's 4chan's fault for tricking them

Student Accused of Rape By 'Mattress Girl' Sues Columbia U., Publishes Dozens of Damning Texts - "Paul Nungesser, the Columbia University student accused of raping fellow student Emma Sulkowicz, is now suing the university for doing nothing to stop Sulkowicz's harassment campaign against him, which he claims "effectively destroyed" his college experience, reputation, and future career prospects. His lawsuit contains a wealth of new information about the contested sexual assault, including dozens of messages establishing Sulkowicz's sexual "yearning" for Nungesser, which she sent to him both before and after the alleged incident... those in the media who uncritically re-reported Sulkowicz’s claims and gave credence to her antics should be feeling rather ashamed of themselves. With each new development, this story begins to look more and more like a Rolling Stone job."

Columbia student defamed by mattress girl is suing - "Threats to Nungesser have appeared online and on Sulkowicz's Facebook account, including one message suggesting Nungesser commit suicide. (Sulkowicz "liked" that comment.) In response to the lawsuit, Sulkowicz (who is not being sued), told the Associated Press that she thinks "it's ridiculous that Paul would sue not only the school but one of my past professors for allowing me to make an art piece." She also said that it was "ridiculous that he would read it as a 'bullying strategy,' especially given his continued public attempts to smear my reputation, when really it's just an artistic expression of the personal trauma I've experienced at Columbia." So, her media campaign to brand him a rapist was art, but him defending himself is bullying?"

Is having a loving family an unfair advantage? - "‘One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field’... The test they devised was based on what they term ‘familial relationship goods’; those unique and identifiable things that arise within the family unit and contribute to the flourishing of family members. For Swift, there’s one particular choice that fails the test. ‘Private schooling cannot be justified by appeal to these familial relationship goods,’ he says. ‘It’s just not the case that in order for a family to realise these intimate, loving, authoritative, affectionate, love-based relationships you need to be able to send your child to an elite private school’... ‘The evidence shows that the difference between those who get bedtime stories and those who don’t—the difference in their life chances—is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t,’ he says. This devilish twist of evidence surely leads to a further conclusion—that perhaps in the interests of levelling the playing field, bedtime stories should also be restricted... ‘We could prevent elite private schooling without any real hit to healthy family relationships, whereas if we say that you can’t read bedtime stories to your kids because it’s not fair that some kids get them and others don’t, then that would be too big a hit at the core of family life.’ So should parents snuggling up for one last story before lights out be even a little concerned about the advantage they might be conferring? ‘I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally,’ quips Swift."
Social Justice: creating a world that nobody wants to live in

Amanda On's answer to What is the difference between Chinese women and Japanese women? - Quora - "Japanese women tend to be very polite, quiet, and demure almost. This is my experience when I vacationed to Japan over the summer, so of course, I'm probably only seeing a facet of their personality. Also, high-pitched voices. I was honestly shocked when I heard grown women speaking so high. I thought it was just an anime thing.
Chinese women, on the other hand, are a lot more assertive. In some cases, they can almost be called mean. Many of them will not deal with bullshit, and they WILL tell you what they think. If you live in America, they're actually not that far off from American women. Most of the time, even more."

Pop music marked by three revolutions in 50 years - "They found three music revolutions - in 1964, 1983 and 1991 - and traced the loss of blues chords from the charts, as well as the birth of disco... The team also refuted claims that pop music is starting to sound the same."

Vincent Law: No regrets as bailor for Amos Yee - "Mr Law say Amos is the most pleasant youth that he has ever worked with as Amos is very responsive to his questions and courteous towards him. Mr Law as a family counselor counsels youth at risk sent to him through the police, such youths are normally involved in illegal assemblies, fighting or other offences. Usually, the youths would not respond to Mr Law’s questions and being not cooperative in the counselling process. They would also fail to turn up for arranged meetings as they feel that he is wasting their time. “Amos is different”, said Mr Law as he would reason on points which he does not agree upon. An example which Mr Law gave is on the discussion he had in regards to the profanity in Amos’ videos. Amos disagreed that he should omit the vulgarities in the videos. Mr Law feels that Amos just simply has to be himself."

Philip Lyle Hansen with fetish for 'fat gummy ladies' guilty of pulling women's teeth out with pliers during sex

Why can’t Muslims laugh at Mohammed? - "Jewish and Christian Scripture are human reports of an encounter with the Divine. The foundation of the Christian Bible are four separate reports of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth that in some respects contradict each other. The Koran, to be sure, has contradictory elements, which are addressed through so-called Abrogation Theory (Naskh), allowing one Koranic verse to be nullified by another. But Mohammed’s revelation of the Koran is not a human report so much as a stenographic transcription of the purported words of Allah. No Muslim argues that Mohammed was more than human, but for practical purposes he is indistinguishable from Allah, because he was simply the vessel into which Allah supposedly his directions. To make light of Mohammed is to impugn Allah. It is not blasphemous to laugh at Moses, whose human failings prevented him from leaving the people of Israel into the promised land. To humanize Mohammed, though, is an act of lèse-majesté against the Muslim God. That is not quite the same thing as joking about Moses or St. Matthew... there is no divine-human encounter in Islam, no revelation, only the selection of a human mouth as the loudspeaker by which Allah declares his Koran... The Muslim god therefore remains utterly remote from humans, unconstrained in power and arbitrary in his actions"

The sick and twisted history of Ultron, Marvel’s lesson about the singularity

The tragic history of Scarlet Witch, who will make her film debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron

White People Rioting for No Reason
Comments: "you can't say these riots were all whites, look at the pics, these sports related riots are done by a wide variety of people and the so called protest riots done because of so called racist actions done by whites are carried out by one"
"The white hooligans pictured here *are* denounced by the same cranky old white men that denounce the idea that stealing tv's is an acceptable way of protesting for civil rights"
[To a feminist playing the gender card] "I've also shrewdly noticed that many of the rioters in these photos have their arms up in the air in what I can only deduce was an expression of having arms. This is a deeper issue which shows that we've normalized lack of media coverage for amputees, white AND black."
"The reality is, no one supported, condoned or excused the example above. In the example of the bike getting stolen, the community banded together to identify the looters. In Ferguson or Baltimore, if you identified the looters, you'd be targeted as a snitch."