Links - 21st January 2016

Domino’s thinks it can sell pizza—with pineapple!—to Italians - Quartz - "“Innovative” ingredients and reasonable prices—a simple margherita from Domino’s is €5 (about $5.60), which is about average—aren’t, however, the only way the company (which right now only has a single outlet in Milan) plans to take over the country. Something else Domino’s is bringing to Italy is “the innovative technology that will allow customers to order online, too,” Alessandro Lazzaroni, the franchise’s partner in Italy, told Il Sole 24 Ore"

How Weird Government Regulations Led To Portland's Vegan Strip Club - "Oregon has a regulatory environment that made the emergence of a vegan strip club essentially inevitable. It's unusually easy to open a strip club. But if you want a liquor license, you have to serve food... Fortunately for Johnny, Oregon has some of the country's loosest regulations on strip clubs. In most states, municipalities have the power to limit where strip clubs can operate and what kind of shows they can offer. But in Oregon, you can open a strip club in most any commercially zoned location, featuring most any kind of show. Or you can take your existing restaurant, install a stage, and start having women take their clothes off."

Portland Police arrest 35 in Black Friday vegan strip club riot - "Casa Diablo, billed as the world’s first vegan strip club, held its first ever Black Friday sale Nov. 28, and was clearly unprepared for the onslaught of excited customers who braved the rain for hours for the club’s 5 a.m. opening. Patrons of the Northwest Portland establishment got into a brawl over 59¢ a minute lap dances, despite the club’s attempt to be prepared by having 24 dancers available that morning."

How The New York Times whitewashes Palestinian terror - "This week began as the last one ended — with more Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israeli Jews, and more dead. And yet, this information might surprise readers of The New York Times... Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently called on his people to protect Jerusalem holy sites from the “filthy feet” of Israeli Jews, and terrorists have heeded the call, taking to the streets to thrust knives into any Israeli they encounter — other recent stabbing victims include an 80-year-old woman and a 13-year-old boy on a bike. But even this incitement, and even this terror, is no match for the creativity of The New York Times. When a Palestinian assailant was caught on film last month wielding a knife and rushing at Israelis, before quickly being neutralized by Israeli security personnel, Times reporters simply avoided telling readers about the video. And instead of mentioning this incriminating piece of evidence, they repeatedly cited false Palestinian allegations that Israelis planted the knife next to the “innocent” attacker. Creatively, and unethically, they turned an empirical fact into an unknowable case of police vs. “witness.”... Similarly, after Palestinians stoned a Jewish car, resulting in the death of the driver, a reporter insisted they weren’t attacking the Israeli but merely pelting “the road he was driving on.” The death, reporters insisted, was an “accident.”"

Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges - "emergency calls to Counseling had more than doubled over the past five years. Students are increasingly seeking help for, and apparently having emotional crises over, problems of everyday life. Recent examples mentioned included a student who felt traumatized because her roommate had called her a “bitch” and two students who had sought counseling because they had seen a mouse in their off-campus apartment. The latter two also called the police, who kindly arrived and set a mousetrap for them. Faculty at the meetings noted that students’ emotional fragility has become a serious problem when it comes to grading. Some said they had grown afraid to give low grades for poor performance, because of the subsequent emotional crises they would have to deal with in their offices... Reinforcing the claim that this is a nationwide problem, the Chronicle of Higher Education recently ran an article by Robin Wilson entitled, “An Epidemic of Anguish: Overwhelmed by Demand for Mental-Health Care, Colleges Face Conflicts in Choosing How to Respond" (Aug. 31, 2015)... I have described the dramatic decline, over the past few decades, in children’s opportunities to play, explore, and pursue their own interests away from adults. Among the consequences, I have argued, are well-documented increases in anxiety and depression, and decreases in the sense of control of their own lives. We have raised a generation of young people who have not been given the opportunity to learn how to solve their own problems. They have not been given the opportunity to get into trouble and find their own way out, to experience failure and realize they can survive it, to be called bad names by others and learn how to respond without adult intervention. So now, here’s what we have: Young people,18 years and older, going to college still unable or unwilling to take responsibility for themselves, still feeling that if a problem arises they need an adult to solve it."
No wonder they want their "safe spaces", are so easily "triggered" and experience so much "trauma"

Helicopter Parenting & College Students’ Increased Neediness - "Those students who reported the most helicopter parenting scored lowest on the self-efficacy scale and also gave the least adaptive responses to the workplace scenarios. For example, in response to the critical performance review from an employer they were less likely than the others to say that they would listen to the criticism and try to improve (which researchers scored as an adaptive response), and they were more likely to say that they would quit the job, explain to the employer why the rating was unfair, or ask a parent to call the manager on their behalf (which researchers scored as maladaptive responses)... students who had the most controlling and intrusive parents—as assessed by the parents' as well as by the students' reports of parenting style—manifested the lowest scores on the self-efficacy scale and the highest scores on the entitlement scale. In further studies using a similar design, Segrin and his colleagues (2013, 2015) found that over-intrusive, over-controlling, over-protective parenting correlated significantly with students’ higher levels of narcissism and reduced ability to cope emotionally with setbacks. Other, similar questionnaire studies have revealed significant correlations of such over-parenting with college students’ reduced feelings of competency, greater depression, reduced satisfaction with life, greater alienation from peers, greater likelihood of being medicated for anxiety or depression, and greater use of pain medicines for purposes other than reducing pain... longitudinal research indicates that over-controlling parenting that begins early in a child’s life predicts psychological difficulties later on. For example, in one classic study, researchers assessed parents of 3- and 4-year-olds for the degree of freedom they allowed their little ones. They then assessed the children for various characteristics when they were in 6th and 9th grade (Harrington et al., 1987). The result was that those children who had been allowed the most freedom early on showed the most evidence of creativity, curiosity, initiative, confidence, and self-reliance in their teenage years, and those who had been allowed the least freedom showed the least of these qualities."

The Decline of Play and Rise in Children's Mental Disorders - "Today, by at least some estimates, five to eight times as many high school and college students meet the criteria for diagnosis of major depression and/or anxiety disorder as was true half a century or more ago. This increased psychopathology is not the result of changed diagnostic criteria; it holds even when the measures and criteria are constant... The increased psychopathology seems to have nothing to do with realistic dangers and uncertainties in the larger world. The changes do not correlate with economic cycles, wars, or any of the other kinds of world events that people often talk about as affecting children's mental states. Rates of anxiety and depression among children and adolescents were far lower during the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and the turbulent 1960s and early ‘70s than they are today. The changes seem to have much more to do with the way young people view the world than with the way the world actually is... By depriving children of opportunities to play on their own, away from direct adult supervision and control, we are depriving them of opportunities to learn how to take control of their own lives. We may think we are protecting them, but in fact we are diminishing their joy, diminishing their sense of self-control, preventing them from discovering and exploring the endeavors they would most love, and increasing the odds that they will suffer from anxiety, depression, and other disorders.

'Woman' pleads guilty to sexually assaulting underage girl with sex toy - "In a first-of-its-kind case in Singapore, a woman has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting an underage girl. The catch: Zunika Ahmad had been living as an Indonesian man and has two wives.Zunika, 39, pleaded guilty to seven charges on Monday (Dec 7), including four charges for using a sex toy to sexually assault her 13-year-old neighbour... It was only after her arrest and remand at Changi Women's Prison that Zunika was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, or "a strong desire to be male". Zunika had assumed "a role as a male to the extent of obtaining a fictitious identity and being married to females"... Zunika, who looks like a man and has a deep voice, presented herself as an Indonesian man to the victim and her family. Zunika's wives were also under the impression that they were married to an Indonesian man. In fact, her first wife became pregnant after having an affair, but told Zunika the baby was hers. As she wanted to have a family, and was unwilling to reveal her true identity, Zunika went along with the lie... Ms Nair told the court that Zunika intends to undergo surgery after serving her sentence, and continue living with her wives and daughter, who have come to terms with her transsexualism. Deputy Public Prosecutor John Lu said the case is "so unique, I can't find a parallel for it"... Zunika is also facing four charges for using a forged Indonesian passport, one charge under the Registry of Births and Deaths Act for registering herself as the father of her first wife's daughter and one charge for slapping the victim in March 2014"
If you can cane your kids, why can't you slap others'?

BBC News - Blogger Clementine Ford received death and rape threats... - "Why do trolls go after feminists?"
"Bad headline, that. Might want to mention her stance on "Kill all men" for a start."
Using feminist apologist logic, she is not a feminist since she said "Kill all men". So either way the BBC screwed up

Clarkson University Undergrads Research Link Between Hauntings & Indoor Air Quality - "human experiences reported in many hauntings are similar to mental or neurological symptoms reported by some individuals exposed to toxic molds. It is known that some fungi, such as rye ergot fungus, may cause severe psychosis in humans."

Researchers isolate the ‘human smell of death’ - "She set up other jars with pig, mouce, mole, rabbit, turtle, frog, sturgeon, or bird remains. Pig remains in particular have often been used in past decomposition studies because of their similarities to human bodies (which are often hard to come by): They have the same microbes in their guts, the same percentage of body fat, and similar hair as people. But it was not clear whether the decomposition process was the same because the two species had never been studied under identical conditions. Rosier identified the compounds in the collected gases and compared them among species. Over 6 months, she found 452 organic compounds. At first, sulfur-containing compounds seemed to distinguish the different species, but they were not unique to humans or even present in all humans. Further, they disappeared over time. Compounds called esters, a big component of animal fat, looked more promising. Ultimately, eight compounds distinguished pig and human remains from those of other animals, and five esters separated pigs from humans"

The rise of liberal intolerance in America - FT.com - "Far from outgrowing race, the PC movement is entrenching it. Princeton students this month occupied the university president’s office demanding the name Woodrow Wilson — America’s 28th president and former head of Princeton — be scrubbed from campus. That included the prestigious Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs, residential halls and a mural of him in the dining hall. Protesters also demanded “cultural competency training” for faculty members and the introduction of mandatory courses on marginalised peoples. The case against Wilson is simple. He reintroduced segregation into the federal workforce. The case in his favour is that he is an important historic figure. He was also author of the Treaty of Versailles. Once you start eliminating names, it is a journey without end. Logic would demand the renaming of Washington, since America’s first president owned slaves. Others, such as Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, were guiltier. Should they be judged solely on that? Winston Churchill was an unabashed imperialist. Yet history judges him kindly for standing up to Nazism. What about Franklin Roosevelt? America’s 32nd president did not lift a finger to advance civil rights. He also interned 120,000 Japanese-Americans in the second world war. There is no such thing as an uncomplicated historic figure... The goal is to eliminate prejudice from the mind. Yet it can have the perverse effect of heightening awareness of race. There is a boom on America’s campuses — and beyond — of what one critic has dubbed the “race therapy complex”. University faculties are bulging with multicultural guidance counsellors, diversity officers and those whose task it is to provide training in racial etiquette. Their job is to detect racial insensitivity. Naturally, some find it where it does not exist. The more such positions are created, the greater the vested interests behind it. As Upton Sinclair said: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”... Anyone with ambition in US public life has long since learnt the value of self-censorship. A word out of context can ruin your chances of being confirmed by the US Senate. Risk-taking is penalised. Blandness is key to career advancement. Little wonder large swaths of the American public have lost faith in their leaders’ integrity. When a politician speaks, the effect is too often chloroformic. The vacuum that spontaneity once occupied is wide open for others to fill. Next time you wonder why a demagogue like Donald Trump is doing so well, ask why there is such high return to his plain spokenness. Could it be because it is being rooted out of public life?"