Links - 15th December 2015

Man had sex with underage girls, then made them prostitutes - "Some of the girls who applied for a job at his social escort agency were as young as 15 years old. But that didn't stop him from using them to provide sexual services to men. Chew Tiong Wei also had sex with some of them because he wanted to "try" them out before hiring them. A 17-year-old girl whom Chew had sex with went on to make about $20,000 for him in about a year. The university undergraduate slept with about 50 men, charging them $400 to $1,000 each. As with his other girls, Chew took 40 per cent of her takings as his cut. His other "social escorts" were not as lucrative, but Chew still earned $1.047 million from at least 19 prostitutes from 2007 until last year... Within the next year, he made between $20,000 and $30,000, motivating him to improve his business. In 2010, he spent about $24,000 to hire professionals to create a website and a short-messaging service (SMS) database program for his business... The girls would be asked for their personal particulars such as their NRIC and age, relevant sexual experience, preferred age limit of their customers, sexual services they are willing to provide and their minimum price. When it came to recruiting females under 18, Chew would convince them to have sex with him first before hiring them. He would tell them he needed to "try" them out and provide pointers so they could "get used to the whole feel". That was how he convinced a 15-year-old girl to have sex with him in June 2008 before recruiting her to be a prostitute... For the next six months, the girl had paid sex with 76 male customers and gave Chew about $6,770. He also met another 15-year-old girl, who saw his advertisement and asked her 16-year-old female friend along for the interview and photoshoot in a hotel room. After Chew took pictures of them in their lingerie, he said he wanted to test their sexual services and offered to paid them. They agreed and engaged in a threesome with Chew, who paid them $50 each... He told her she would need to talk to a customer first and kiss him if he did not make the first move. They then had sex with a condom, only for her to push him away at some point when she felt pain. He assured her that everything would be fine and they resumed, even having unprotected sex at some point.
Afterwards, he told her not to push the customer away during sex... Chew also filmed himself having sex with his prostitutes in hotel rooms or his Toa Payoh home on 27 occasions. Many of them were unaware they were being filmed"

Pimp who earned S$2.5 million from social escort business pleads guilty - "Chew decided to set up a database system to keep track of clients and their respective bookings. Chew eventually had about six administrative staff helping to attend to clients, to set up meetings with prostitutes and to procure more women for the trade."

Online vice-ring pimp who made $1m in profits over 5 years convicted of vice offences - "A 38-year-old online vice-ring pimp who received nearly $2.6 million in revenue and earned a profit of about $1 million over five years was convicted of various offences... Chew's vice-ring involved at least 22 prostitutes, 11 of whom were below age 18 at the time of the offences. The youngest was 15... He pleaded guilty to evading tax by under-declaring his profit for the year of assessment 2012 in his income tax return. He declared his profit to be $40,166, when it was actually $175,779. The tax undercharged amounted to $15,118.25. He also declared his profit for the year of assessment 2013 to be $20,345, when it was actually $160,417. The tax undercharged amounted to $11,846.40. In April last year, Chew also submitted a Productivity and Innovation Credit cash payout application form for purchasing a $15,000 software. In the form, he declared that he had met the conditions of employing and making CPF contributions for at least three local employees, and provided the particulars of his father, mother and wife. They were never employed by Chew, but he had made CPF contributions into their accounts. Chew later obtained a PIC cash payout of $9,000 and a PIC bonus of $15,000."

What’s Behind Baltimore’s Record-Setting Rise in Homicides - "Since the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black Baltimore resident who died in police custody on April 19, the balance of power between police and citizens in the city appears to have tilted on its axis. Protests following Gray’s death, which at first experienced little police pushback, have led to elevated levels of violence around the city by criminals who some experts say appear emboldened. There were 43 homicides in May, the most in any month since December 1971—when the city was almost one-third bigger than it is today. According to numbers compiled by the Baltimore Sun and the FBI, the average number of monthly murders in May from 2009 to 2014 was 21... Since six officers were indicted in Gray’s death on May 1, police officers’ concerns over potential prosecution for improper use of force now appear to be holding many of them back from arresting suspects altogether. When they do, they’re surrounded by smartphone-wielding citizens. It’s as if the police are no longer patrolling Baltimore the way they once did; instead, the citizens are patrolling them. “The cops I’ve spoken to say it’s different now,” said Peter Moskos, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor and former Baltimore City police officer. “Cops are saying, If we’re going to get in trouble for well-intentioned mistakes, then f— it, I’m not working”... The number of murders has doubled while shootings are up more than 80%, and most experts say that it’s at least partly linked to a reluctance by police to actively do their jobs... Many on-duty officers are also being pulled away from their normal beats to back up other officers during a stop or an arrest because of the groups of people who gather to record their actions. Police Commissioner Anthony Batts has described situations in which “30 to 50 people” are surrounding officers on duty. “They’re still doing their jobs, but now these stops takes four officers instead of two because they’re surrounded by people filming them,” Moskos said. Baltimore also appears to be at least a short-term test case for how much of an effect policing has on crime. Moskos said some experts don’t accept the notion that policing is linked to crime rates and that crime can only be lessened by tackling root causes like poverty or poor education, rather than boosting a police force."
Presumably it's better for 10 people to be killed in crime than for 1 person to be killed by a police officer

US tackles crowdfunding man who spent money on himself - "In 2012, Erik Chevalier raised more than $122,000 (£79,000) to make a board game called The Doom That Came to Atlantic City. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said much of the money raised went on rent, personal equipment and moving expenses. In a settlement, Mr Chevalier agreed to honour refunds and to be honest in any future crowdfunding projects. The legal action is believed to be the first against someone who misrepresented crowdfunding projects or misappropriated funds."

BBC World Service - The Documentary, Wall in the Head - "We stole some motorbikes but got caught on the Bavarian border. One shot by the border police and that would've been the end of us. It was a completely stupid thing to do, but thank god they just arrested us and we were locked up. And because I was a political prisoner, I've now got a better pension. Back then I never though I was providing for the future"

Hanged on a comma: drafting can be a matter of life and death - "Sir Roger was an Irish nationalist activist. He was tried under the Treason Act 1351 – text here. A full description of the trial appears here. For reasons that are discussed below, he was famously said to have been “hanged on a comma”... Sir Roger’s counsel argued that acts performed outside the UK could not amount to treason within the UK. This argument was based on interpreting the wording of the statute. Or rather, interpreting the English version of the statute, for the original was written in Norman French... At one point during the appeal hearing, the discussion descends to whether a mark on the original roll indicates a comma, a bracket or just a centuries-old fold in the paper!"

Back to the issue of Singaporeans and their accent - "You should always put the client's needs before yours, you are not as important as the client, you should be humble and treat the client as a VIP. If the client wants to speak the Queen's English, then you jolly well stuff your Singlish where the sun don't shine and you speak proper English. And by the same token, if the client wants to speak Hokkien (which was the case when I dealt with a Taiwanese client in London who was thrilled to meet a fellow Hokkien person), then I stuffed my Queen's English where the sun don't shine and spoke to him in Hokkien (his Taiwanese Hokkien wasn't easy to understand). Either way, you let the other party decide what kind of language they want to speak, you don't impose your preferences on them... I cringe at the way Singlish has evolved in the last 20 years. I no longer recognize it and when I try to speak Singlish to Singaporeans these days, they do not understand me. This is because when I learnt Singlish back in the 1980s, it was such a rich mix of English infused with Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Malay and Tamil - it was beautiful to listen to and a joy to speak. Nowadays, Singaporean-Chinese people tend to speak only Mandarin and English, so the moment I use a loanword from any other of those Chinese dialects, Malay or Tamil, I am met with blank stares"

“For the Avoidance of Doubt” - "Never use for the avoidance of doubt. Sometimes a drafter will use this phrase in a contract to introduce language that seeks to clarify preceding language, usually by indicating that something either falls within or is excluded from the scope of the preceding language. In this context, for the avoidance of doubt says, in effect, “excuse us if we state the obvious.”"

As a Navy SEAL Sniper, my ruck was routinely 120... - Craig "Sawman" Sawyer - "As a Navy SEAL Sniper, my ruck was routinely 120 pounds. My second line was another 50-60 pounds. My main weapon, if carrying the Tac 50 was another 30 pounds. I'm 6 ft, 220 pounds with a 33 inch waist. There were many times I could barely stand up with my own equipment on my back. I had to jump that gear from airplanes in the dark, lock it out of submarines and swim it into hostile countries, hump it through jungles, deserts and mountains for further than I'm allowed to disclose. I can tell you from sacrificing my health in that capacity for my country, that's a brutally physical job, no matter how you slice it. It takes a brute to get those tools into a foreign country, not to mention actually WINNING the fight against their country's fiercest Special Forces Units. Less than 1% of the fittest and baddest males are capable of making the grade. What if your 275 pound teammate goes down in a firefight? I can barely drag him out of there using all the strength and insane determination I have. The fact is, nobody less physically capable could get him to the helo to get him off target and back home. Does he deserve to have teammates he can save, but who could not save him?... I must say, though, that until women are directly and routinely competing with monsters like Mike Tyson for the world heavyweight boxing championship, UFC championships, competing very effectively with the NFL Superbowl champs, and competing directly with male heavyweight powerlifting champions, putting them in front line Spec Ops units that require they beat the most capable foreign Special Forces Units to death, even if hand-to-hand combat is required (and it has ALWAYS boiled down to that historically) within a primal and necessarily physical profession, for our national security is…misguided. That's the nicest term I can place upon such a supremely foolish development. This is a classic example of decisions being made by those who have ZERO concept of what it really takes to win a fight with no rules, in the dark of night, halfway around the globe, when our nation's security is at risk and successful force is required to save the day, at all cost. Failure is not an option. When this kind of politics is involved, the standards are changed to fit the narrative, every time. In practical application in the real world, whether or not it is admitted to the public, the standards are forced down to accommodate the story. This ends up putting people in harm's way who are not prepared. Catastrophe follows. U.S. Army Col. David Hackworth wrote about this using the example of the mom who wrote her Congressman demanding her son make it through Special Forces training, then after political pressure was applied and standards were dropped to get her son through so he could have his fancy title, her son died in combat because he was in over his head. He didn't have what it took. The standards would have handled that, if only allowed. What's worse is he likely got some of his more capable teammates killed because they were counting on him to cover their backs as they had for him. The standards are NEVER kept when politics gets forced into the matter. This brand of interference is expensive in the cost of lives, morale and unit effectiveness"

Furries from A to Z (Anthropomorphism to Zoomorphism) - "Th is study explored the furry identity. Furries are humans interested in anthropomorphic art and cartoons. Some furries have zoomorphic tendencies. Furries often identify with, and/or assume, characteristics of a special/totem species of nonhuman animal. Th is research surveyed both fur-ries (n = 217) and non-furry individuals (n = 29) attending a furry convention and a comparison group of college students (n = 68). Furries commonly indicated dragons and various canine and feline species as their alternate-species identity; none reported a nonhuman-primate identity. Dichotomous responses ("yes" or "no") to two key furry-identity questions ("do you consider yourself to be less than 100% human" and "if you could become 0% human, would you") pro-duced a two-by-two furry typology. Th ese two independent dimensions are self-perception (undistorted versus distorted) and species identity (attained versus unattained). One-quarter of the furry sample answered "yes" to both questions, placing them in the "Distorted Unattained" quadrant. Th is type of furry has certain characteristics paralleling gender-identity disorder. To explore this parallel, the furry typology, and the proposed construct of "Species Identity Disorder" needs further research."

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