Links - 4th November 2016

Animal Lovers League - ALL Authorized Page - Timeline - "The driver must have seen Sayang as the volunteer noticed the car slowing down. But the driver kept driving and accidentally or otherwise, hit Sayang. She kept on driving even when Sayang was under the carriage of the car. That was when the volunteer started chasing the car and it stopped. The volunteers told her she should have stopped and helped them with the injured dog. That was when the driver became upset and said "F.... you. It is only a dog," and drove off."
The comments are scary
Many people are upset about dogs being killed, but not other animals. Much less humans.

Woman CSI-ed out as owner of car that hit dog wasn’t the one driving car that hit dog at the time - "Animal lovers and keyboard warriors all around Singapore were p*** off at a woman who supposedly said “F*** you. It’s only a dog” after hitting a dog and driving off. The dog was being taken care of by the Animal Lovers League (ALL). Some even went to check the car’s registration plate and traced the name of the owner of the car. After the name of the car owner was splashed across the Internet, other Internet vigilantes pointed out that the car owner supposedly works for Huttons Asia, a real estate agency. This led to viral articles painting the car owner as the one who hit the dog, such as this article with over 4,000 shares. Swarms of one-star reviews hit Huttons Asia’s Facebook page shortly after. All this while, nobody stopped to wonder if someone else could have been driving the car at the time instead. The Animal Lovers League, after meeting with the management of Huttons Asia, said in a Facebook update that there were two police reports lodged in relation to this case. The first report was by the vehicle owner stating to the police that she was not the driver at the material time. The second report was lodged by another lady, admitting to being the driver of the said vehicle at the material time. They also shared that the driver who hit the dog “is not an agent or employee of Huttons.” It is not known whether Huttons Asia or the car owner is considering legal action against those who erroneously pinned blame."
This would be a good time to use the Protection from Harassment Act


Employer of owner of “it’s just a dog, f**k you” hit-and-run car investigates case, gets inundated with one-star ratings - "Huttons Asia is a real estate agency in Singapore, and it’s not having a good week at all. Since the words “It’s just a dog, f**k you” said by the woman who ran over a dog belonging to Animal Lovers’ League became immortalised online on Sunday, the fury of pretty much everyone was incited."
Friend: "Witch hunting: Singaporeans' top skill. I always believed that Singaporeans are a bunch of miserable people aiming to make other people's lives miserable too.
Comment on page: "I was told by Huttons staffs in Hougang that it was someone else driving the car at the time of the accident. And they said that her details is now out in the public just like that. This is the kind of world we live in now."
Comments on Facebook: "I don't see people going after drivers who've knocked down people with this kind of vengeance. Why don't people csi every hit and run case or RTA involving a human too?"
"Her life? No that would be too easy a way out for her."
"since the MRT keep breaking down, why don't y'all smart alecs go target government websites too? Bring them down, hunt them down and threaten them. You guys are bringing the reputation of a innocent company down, remember the bullies are you guys."
"this is like destroying an entire ant-hill with a blowtorch just become one ant fell into your soup."
"In times like these where people are losing jobs, keyboard warriors are making things worse."
"Here in sg, when given the opportunity, everyone is out for blood. Give them a reason and they will take the opportunity to finish you and everyone around you."
"The only good this has done is provide a list of horrible people you shouldn't be friends with."
"Singaporean's other favourite pass time when not gorging on food and posting foodpics online.....mob trolling the latest hate target online."
"you are ALL one bad day away from becoming this person"
"How does one square the online vitriol towards a human being with kindness towards animal?"

The Real Story of Sunil Tripathi, the Boston Bomber Who Wasn't - "Help Us Find Sunil Tripathi, which premiered in March at the Atlanta Film Festival, is as much a cautionary tale of how social media can influence the mainstream discourse--for better or for worse--as it is about a family's search for answers... "Sunil being reported in any way associated with the Boston bombing was inaccurate and unsourced and strictly a result of sort of a mass rumor coming through social media"
Maybe he killed himself because of the (mistaken) CSI-ing - something fans of it and the online dogpiling should take note of

Buying a halal microwave for the office - www.hardwarezone.com.sg - "The muslims in my office are asking for another halal microwave because they say they cant use the exisiting one as we use it to warm up pork stuff. Is it common in ur office? We are small office so wonder that is the norm in other offices. We have 4 muslims out of 20. Buddhists seem to be ok with warming up beef stuff though."
"Dbs got like that.. fridge also got halal"
"not only the price la... the space ocupied is more expensive"
"My work place every branch also have two microwaves, two toasters."
"ask them to split the cost then. also tell them, money also got touch by butchers who handles pork. ppl who eat pork stuff also touch money, since money also not halal, u guys use your not halal money and buy a microwave la. if they say, if they dont know their money not halal, then is not crime. then ask them to pretend the existing microwave use for halal food only."
"tell them buy their own microwave. the whole world need to accomdate to their religion issit. noone force them to be islam wo. is their choice. and you have to pay the consequence for the choices you make."
"Those that use halal microwave to heat non halal food like subway ish jin funny"
"one guy got angry because someone put up an order form for suckling pig (near CNY period) in the office"
"where will this stop? will we need segregated halal toilet? halal desk? halal aircon? my office vegetarian ok with using common oven, just saying..."
"so simple sell the microwave that you have can le. everyone dont have. fair liao."
"Ask them buy themselves lah. You buy microwave, next month say buy halal fridge"
"hawker center tables got touch pork stuff b4. they cannot touch also"
"liddat can rop excuse from biz related subjects cause all got interest rate and interest is haram."
"actually if got space to put, they can pool $$ to buy wat coz they wanted it"
"They could seal their food in a Ziploc if they are so concerned. I dun see a need to waste extra money to buy two. Lky was right"

Rising trend of halal labelling generates concern - "The paint tin has a silhouette of a mosque on the label, while the paint company's brochure has the face of a pig crossed out... Bernahal says the chemicals in its paints are free from lard, which is considered unclean in Islam... In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, there are many other items touted as halal, such as a computer mouse, headscarves and even shirt buttons. In Malaysia, there are discussions whether to introduce halal supermarket trolleys that cannot be used by buyers of pork. There is also a recently launched halal Internet browser and halal household detergents... HALAL CAT FOOD: Pets do not have a religion, but just in case their Muslim owners want their furry friends to follow the same dietary restrictions... HALAL PLASTIC BAGS, DETERGENTS, FACIAL CLEANSERS: Manufacturers now churn these out, with guarantees of no pork or alcohol content in these products... HALAL HEADSCARVES: Indonesian brand Zoya received flak on social media for claiming its fabrics use only plant- based emulsifiers, not pig gelatin... "People ask for a halal toilet bowl because it comes into contact with humans. Same for plastic bags and packaging that have contact with food"... Lumin Spring International Group produces mineral water that has the Jakim halal logo. "If we tell buyers that our water is Malaysian halal-certified, it sells better"... commercial uses of the label have spurred a group of auditors, including Muslim Singaporeans, to form a new association to help governments certify manufacturers using halal guidelines and standard practices. The International Association of Halal Auditors [aims] to quash "halal extremism" and set the record straight on what is "genuinely halal and good", Mr Imran told The Straits Times. "Having unnecessarily stricter rules towards halal will lead to halal extremism. Who would have thought of halal paint, halal tudung and halal condoms?" he said. "Halal extremism is slowly creeping in as some clerics impart their own judgment, hence making halal more stringent"... Some go beyond what the religion requires, in what is described by Mr Asri as being "halal crazy"... Kopi luwak is halal in Singapore. But it is haram - not permissible for Muslim consumption - in Malaysia."

How To Report Spam From GMail Account - "if it is really from GMail then report it here. Note: While it may look like the form above should used to submit phishing emails only, the header says - “I would like to report a Gmail user who has sent messages that violate the Gmail Program Policies and/or Terms of Use.”, which is appropriate for reporting spam."

Are variations in gender equality evident in pornography? A cross-cultural study - "An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypothesis that – consistent with their GEM ranking – popular Norwegian pornography would depict women in more empowered positions than pornography from the United States and Japan. Results supported this hypothesis. This finding could be attributed to the wider variety in Norwegian pornography, e.g. greater variation in the women's age, weight, and body positioning. There were no significant differences in the extent models in the three countries appeared in demeaning positions."
Keywords: aggressive, Japanese, confidence, posture, Swedish, actresses

IT leaders pick productivity over security - "When asked in the Barkly study what the biggest issues around implementing effective security procedures are, 41 percent said they slow down the system, 33 percent said they're too expensive, 36 percent cited too many updates and 20 percent said that security "requires too much headcount to manage." IT leaders are being forced to choose between strong security and productivity, and most companies are sticking to the latter, according to the data from Barkly. Ultimately, these solutions aren't stopping breaches, as the study points out, and the effects are simply slowing down day-to-day business."

台湾为什么不推广简体字，而是仍然使用繁体字？ - 简繁比较 - 知乎 - "我在台湾还没有遇到过把“繁体字”称为“正体字”、把“简体字”称为“残体字”的人"

Iceland's women leave work at 2.38pm to protest gender pay gap - "Thousands of female employees across Iceland walked out of workplaces at 2.38pm on Monday to protest against earning less than men. Iceland is the best country in the world for gender equality, yet women still earn on average 14 to 18 per cent less than their male colleagues."
Maybe Iceland's women are paid 14% less than men because they do things like leaving work early. Though actually, in Iceland women work 37 hours a week vs men's 47. So if anything the gender pay gap is too low and should be 21%

Pocket 3.0.6 download for those who want the extension back : firefox: - "it's not signed by Mozilla so here's a version that is: https://mega.nz/#!T5RjHZyb!yXz5Wj-x7lWdRKbcCaMQ0_lZfpI828spmIm_sOEX5Ng"

In My Pocket :: Add-ons for Firefox: - "For all those who are missing the old Firefox Pocket addon, here is an unofficial client for the excellent Pocket service. Enjoy!"

WebCite - "Authors increasingly cite webpages and other digital objects on the Internet, which can "disappear" overnight. In one study published in the journal Science, 13% of Internet references in scholarly articles were inactive after only 27 months. Another problem is that cited webpages may change, so that readers see something different than what the citing author saw. The problem of unstable webcitations and the lack of routine digital preservation of cited digital objects has been referred to as an issue "calling for an immediate response" by publishers and authors. An increasing number of editors and publishers ask that authors, when they cite a webpage, make a local copy of the cited webpage/webmaterial, and archive the cited URL in a system like WebCite®, to enable readers permanent access to the cited material."

Tennis: Kuznetsova cuts her own hair to beat Radwanska - "Spectators at Singapore's Indoor Stadium looked on in stunned disbelief when the Russian gave herself an impromptu haircut early in the deciding third set, asking the umpire to get her a large of pair scissors before proceeding to chop off the end of her ponytail and tossing the loose strands onto her seat. "It was bothering me a lot. I was trying to put it behind my headband, but my hair is very thick and heavy," Kuznetsova explained... "Good thing she didn't cut her anything else. I think hair is not very important"... Kuznetsova reeled off the last three games to register one of the bravest wins of her career."

This guy's resignation letter got rewritten by his manager, who praised the company and himself

Fussy-eating toddlers 'not the fault of parents' - "Two-year-old Alice does not like meat and only eats broccoli with ketchup, but scientists researching toddlers' eating habits do not blame her parents. Instead, her fussy food preferences are - largely - down to who she is and the genes she has inherited. They play a key role in her willingness to eat, or even try, new foods. But parents are not completely off the hook - children's behaviour can be changed"

Denying sex to husband for long period ground for divorce: Delhi High Court - "Denying sex to husband for a long time without any justification amounts to mental cruelty and is a ground for divorce, Delhi High Court has said. The verdict came on a petition by a husband seeking divorce, complaining that his wife had subjected him to mental cruelty by not allowing him to have physical relations for four-and-a-half-years though she was not suffering from any physical disability... The man claimed that he and his family members were subjected to mental cruelty by his wife as she was not doing household work"

Psst: Here Are The WiFi Passwords For Airports Across The World

Prime Minister John Key pulled waitress' ponytail - "Prime Minister John Key has dismissed his hair-pulling pranks as "a bit of banter", saying he apologised to an Auckland waitress when it became clear his approaches were unwanted. The waitress made the claims that Key repeatedly tugged on her ponytail in an anonymous blog post... The claims follow a Campbell Live segment last year where Key, as part of a wider political leaders story, was filmed touching the ponytail of a young girl at the Matakana market, north of Auckland. Key's ponytail pulling was reported around the world"

Wallace on Durian

"The Durian grows on a large and lofty forest tree, somewhat resembling an elm in its general character, but with a more smooth and scaly bark. The fruit is round or slightly oval, about the size of a large cocoanut, of a green colour, and covered all over with short stout spines, the bases of which touch each other, and are consequently somewhat hexagonal, while the points are very strong and sharp. It is so completely armed, that if the stalk is broken off it is a difficult matter to lift one from the ground. The outer rind is so thick and tough, that from whatever height it may fall, it is never broken. From the base to the apex five very faint lines may be traced, over which the spines arch a little; these are the sutures of the carpels, and show where the fruit may be divided with a heavy knife and a strong hand. The five cells are satiny white within, and are each filled with an oval mass of cream-coloured pulp, imbedded in which are two or three seeds about the size of chestnuts. This pulp is the edible part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich butter-like custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but intermingled with it comes wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, brown sherry, and other incongruities Then there isa rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid, nor sweet, nor juicy, yet one feels the want of none of these qualities, for it is perfect as it is. It produces no nausea, or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it, the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact to eat durians is a new sensation, worth a voyage to the east to experience.

When the fruit is ripe it falls of itself, and the only way to eat Durians to perfection is to get them as they fall; and the smell is then less overpowering. When unripe, it makes a very good vegetable if cooked, and it is also eaten by the Dyaks raw. In a good fruit season large quantities are preserved salted, in jars and bamboos, and kept the year round, when it acquires a most disgusting odour to Europeans, but the Dyaks appreciate it highly as a relish with their rice. There are in the forest two varieties of wild Durians with much smaller fruits, one of them orange-coloured inside; and these are probably the origin of the large and fine Durians, which are never found wild. It would not, perhaps, be correct to say that the Durian is the best of all fruits, because it cannot supply the place of the subacid juicy kinds, such as the orange, grape, mango, and mangosteen, whose refreshing and cooling qualities are so wholesome and grateful; but as producing a food of the most exquisite flavour, it is unsurpassed. If I had to fix on two only, as representing the perfection of the two classes, I should certainly choose the Durian and the Orange as king and queen of fruits.

The Durian is, however, sometimes dangerous. When the fruit begins to ripen it falls daily and almost hourly, and accidents not unfrequently happen to persons walking or working under the trees. When a Durian strikes a man in its fall, it produces a dreadful wound, the strong spines tearing open the flesh, while the blow itself is very heavy; but from this very circumstance death rarely ensues, the copious effusion of blood preventing the inflammation which might otherwise take place. A Dyak chief informed me that he had been struck down by a Durian falling on his head, which he thought would certainly have caused his death, yet he recovered in a very short time.

Poets and moralists, judging from our English trees and fruits, have thought that small fruits always grew on lofty trees, so that their fall should be harmless to man, while the large ones trailed on the ground. Two of the largest and heaviest fruits known, however, the Brazil-nut fruit (Bertholletia) and Durian, grow on lofty forest trees, from which they fall as soon as they are ripe, and often wound or kill the native inhabitants. From this we may learn two things: first, not to draw general conclusions from a very partial view of nature; and secondly, that trees and fruits, no less than the varied productions of the animal kingdom, do not appear to be organized with exclusive reference to the use and convenience of man."

--- The Malay Archipelago / Alfred Russel Wallace

Links - 3rd November 2016

That Male Birth Control Trial You're All Laughing About Left People Infertile - "Commentators lined up to mock weak-willed men for bailing on a trial thanks to what women put up with every day taking the Pill... Reporters covering this – many of whom likely did not trouble themselves with actually reading the study, which is available here – neglected to mention that some of the consequences were actually quite serious. Of the 320 participants, one guy was rendered infertile by the treatment – four years after finishing the injections he had not recovered a normal sperm count. A total of eight men (2.5% of the study) were not back to “normal sperm counts” a year after they stopped the shots (page 4 of linked study)."

The Straits Times - Timeline - "Cold Storage apologises for 'insensitive' beef promotion during Deepavali"
Comments: "I am a Hindu and I fail to understand exactly why this is a big deal. I am not going to purchase the beef anyway so the signage doesn't even bother me. Time to grow a thicker skin."
"Aiyaaa no need to be too sensitive la. Why must deepavali "discounts" be only for hindu related or deepavali related items ?!?! I enjoy good shopping during CNY sales, Xmas sales, Hari Raya Sales ! No need to be too sensitive, i am a Hindu and i don't find this insensitive or offensive at all !!
Kaliperumal Sundaram: "Even pork are given discount rate during Deepavali, I would take it as positive. Thinking that items are given in discount rate to non-Hindus during Deepavali period. They also can buy and enjoy the holiday."
"Just like Leena, I am a Hindu and I don't think it's really a big issue. Cold Storage has explained that it's an oversight. Let's move on please."
"Why is this offensive! Hinduism doesn't force you not to indulge in beef. There are many ways to reach God! In Tamil 'Kadavul' means look within. God is within you! Nothing offensive."
Ummaira Mohd Razid: "What if hari raya promotion they state pork? Of course the muslims won't buy it. It's a promotion on a festive season for the non muslims to buy. In this case beef cannot ? The ones buying are non hindus...im just saying. Peace no war"
"Too hard to believe we have not come out of it....Deepavali promotion for non-Hindus to enjoy the festive along with us....NO WORRIES."

Obama: Hillary What's Wrong With Politics - "President Obama endorsed Hillary Clinton Thursday afternoon, saying “she’s got the courage, the compassion, and the heart to get the job done.” But that’s not what he was saying in 2008 when the two were competing for the Democratic nomination. In a January 2008 debate, then-Senator Obama accused Clinton of being “willing to say anything to get elected.” He repeated the charge in a radio ad that same month, in which he attacked Clinton as “what’s wrong with politics” and claimed she “will say anything to get elected.”"

16 female MPs don saris for Tamil Murasu Deepavali special - "16 female members of Parliament (MPs) ditched their regular power suits and outfits for colourful Indian saris last Friday (Oct 21), for a Tamil Murasu photoshoot ahead of Deepavali on Saturday, Oct 29."
Cultural Appropriation!

This Greenpeace Stunt May Have Irreparably Damaged Peru's Nazca Site - "The ground around the site is so sensitive and so sacred that Peru has even forbidden presidents and top officials to walk where the Greenpeace activists went. Peru's Deputy Culture Minister told the BBC: "They are absolutely fragile. They are black rocks on a white background. You walk there, and the footprint is going to last hundreds or thousands of years. And the line that they have destroyed is the most visible and most recognized of all.""

Why Did WikiLeaks Help Dox Most of Turkey’s Women? - "Whatever else you might say about WikiLeaks, it’s hard to think of an institution that squanders goodwill more efficiently. Even the people most sympathetic to its aims and ideals have had a hard time defending it recently. Just over the last couple of weeks, whoever ran its Twitter account posted tweets that are either anti-Semitic or deeply weird (the fact that WikiLeaks founder and head Julian Assange ranted about Jewish reporters to a British journalist in 2011 certainly makes it harder to view the posts in a charitable light). Then it was revealed that some of the Democratic National Committee documents it leaked last week — timed intentionally to do maximum damage to Hillary Clinton’s presidential chances, according to Assange — contained personal information, including credit card and Social Security numbers, of DNC donors."

Family Sends Pizza Deliveryman to Check on Grandma After Hurricane - ""I was calling the police department, I was calling the sheriff's department, and no one was answering, so I was really worried." On Sunday, when he still wasn't able to reach her, he decided to get creative. "So I just said, 'I'm going to order her a pizza, and if they can deliver it, then I know she's alive,'" Eric Olsen said... "Police and fire couldn't do it, but Papa John's got there in 30 minutes and put the cellphone to her ear," he joked. He said he got the idea to order the pizza spontaneously. "I was just thinking, 'Who can go there right now? Who can I call in a city where I know no one?'""
People respond to incentives

Judith Gabrielle's answer to How do people with IQs of 140-200 think? - Quora - "When I ask a question, I receive condescension from my peers, and literally watch them gloat over them “knowing something” I don't. When I have an answer, it is weighed less than anyone else's. When I have a suggestion, it is resisted always until or unless circumstances obviate its acquirement. When I need an item in stock, my asking creates resentment….even to people standing around when I'm working. They discuss their personal lives, and don't ask about mine. They make post-work plans and never include me…not once. They ask each other questions that they know I can fully answer just so they don't have to hear me give another explanation. The owner has told me I shouldn't work there. He asked me what else I could do for a job while on parole in which I may use my mind. Everyone else's jokes are funny to him, mine are not... I see hopelessness everywhere. I see people clinging so violently to a hope (either an opinion or an idea) which brings their life into relevance, that even broaching another possibility is perceived as an attempt to invalidate their entire worth as a human being. I see totalitarianism everywhere. I see people so wildly bent upon demanding others accept and even celebrate whatever they do in the name of tolerance, that even only tolerating it is seen as bigoted hatred worthy of being intolerant towards... Socially….exceedingly lonely and have been my entire life. Virtually always misunderstood, virtually always see through the façade I'm presented with from someone else….and virtually always borne out as correct over time."

Miriam Cooke - Canary Mission - "Cooke was a signatory to a 2002 open letter suggesting that Israel would use the war in Iraq to engage in “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians. No retractions were ever issued for the letter after its claims failed to materialize. Cooke has reportedly whitewashed Palestinian female suicide bombing attacks targeting Israelis, saying: “For those of us who really are concerned with women’s role in the Arab public square, in the way in which women have been trying to empower themselves vis-à-vis the U.S., vis-à-vis old colonial powers, vis-à-vis their own men, the situation has become so desperate that now women’s participation in war is a mark of absolute hopelessness.” This line of reasoning runs counter to that of other professors, like Rabab Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University (SFSU) who lionize Palestinian women’s involvement in terrorist violence. Abdulhadi and others routinely praise female terrorists such as international hijacker Leila Khaled as an “icon in liberation movements and…an icon for women’s liberation.” According to a Middle East forum report, Cooke wrote that “complicated relations” between Muslim men and women are solely the result of the “colonial experience.” On the other hand, Cooke has also defended polygamy in the Muslim world... Cooke posited that addressing the suppression of women by Muslim men, in particular, was the key to terminating the mad drive for Empire and ushering in world peace. Along the way, she blamed the establishment of the state of Israel as a root cause of Al Qaeda’s September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon: “9-11 has a long history going back through the Gulf War to the establishment of Israel in 1948.”"

Sexist Peer Reviewer Suggests Study Needs Male Authors - "“It would probably also be beneficial to find one or two male biologists to work with (or at least obtain internal peer review from, but better yet as active co-authors), in order to serve as a possible check against interpretations that may sometimes be drifting too far away from empirical evidence into ideologically biased assumptions,” the anonymous reviewer wrote... The paper detailed findings on the scientists’ examination of gender differences in the transition from Ph.D. to postdoc in the field of life sciences... Rather than gender bias, the reviewer suggests an alternative interpretation: “It could perhaps be the case that 99% of female scientists make a decision in mid-life that spending more time with their children is more important to them than doing everything imaginable to try to get one of the rare positions at the utter pinnacle of their field.” The reviewer, whose gender is unknown, goes on to add that the differences could be attributable to differences in physiology and stamina between men and women which could explain why men, on average, work 15 minutes longer each week"
Yet, when there are not enough women, we are told that we need women for "diversity of thought and experience", you can't have a so-called all male panel which considers the gender gay gap (even though there is a female member and many female associate members), and you can't hold an all male women's rights conference. And feminists lament that the burden of childcare falls disproportionately on women (i.e. that women spend more time with their children and so can't do everything imaginable to try to get one of the rare positions at the utter pinnacle of their field

PLOS ONE ousts reviewer, editor after sexist peer-review storm
How can you give a paper an honest peer review if you're afraid you'll be ousted?
Addendum: When there are no females, the research is slammed as being sexist
When there are no males and it is suggested that a male be gotten, that suggestion is slammed as being sexist

It's time to consider a curfew for men - "Think of it as a mass grounding for men. After a designated period of time, we’ll allow them back on the streets after dark to see how it goes. If the sexual assaults and harassment continue, well, it’s back to the curfew."
"Not all feminists" huh

Phantom Carbohydrates – A Nutrition Mystery - "When a food contains fewer than 5 calories per serving, the manufacturer is allowed to “round down” to 0 on the Nutrition Facts label"

Islamic, yet integrated | The Economist - "estimates put the number of Muslims in the country at around 1% of the population, compared with 4.5% in Britain and 5% in Germany. Moreover, American Islam is not dominated by a single sect or ethnicity. When the Pew Research Centre last tried to count, in 2011, it found Muslims from 77 countries in America. Most western European countries, by contrast, have one or two dominant groups—Algerians in France, Moroccans and Turks in Holland. This matters because the jumble of groups in America makes it harder for Muslim immigrants and their descendants to lead a life apart. Different traditions get squashed together... America’s Muslims are better off than their European co-religionists. They are almost as likely as other Americans to report a household income of $100,000 or more. The same cannot be said of the Pakistanis who came to work in the now-defunct textile mills of northern England or the Turks who became guest workers in West Germany"

The Bedouin Billionaire for Muslim Integration - WSJ - "Mr. Altrad’s biggest challenge wasn’t academic or professional success—that would come easily—but learning to integrate himself. “When you are born in Syria,” he recalls, “you grow with ideas which are not necessarily correct. For example, they educate you that you have to kill Jews wherever you find them. When I came to France I came with this idea.” But then he found himself learning alongside Jewish students at university, “and we became friends”... His thinking about assimilation sounds harsh. But it would be familiar to the immigrants who came to the U.S. at the height of America’s open-borders policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries."

Tumblr Originals: shows original posts and hides reblogs for any given tumblr blog. - "This tool will show only original posts and hide all reblogs for any given tumblr blog. Awesome."

Boba Fett Was Supposed to Be a Bigger Bad Than Darth Vader

Van driver Christopher Gard with eight convictions for using phone at wheel killed cyclist Lee Martin while texting - six weeks after judge let him keep licence

Marvel Pulls Variant Cover For Sexualizing Invincible Iron Man's New 15-Year-Old Hero
If you try to please SJWs, they will just turn on you. What's so sexualised about the Iron Man cover?! And isn't this how teenagers dress?!
And considering real 15 year black girls are also curvy - and some have even bigger breasts...
Comments: "people are so worked up by the body type/costumes of said teen superheroes, but are okay with the notion of them being sent out to potentially die fighting supervillains. It just seems messed up all around."
"I showed this image to my girlfriend who is not particularly comic book savvy... when I told her the character was 15 and the image was pulled from use because the character is thought to be oversexualized, she laughed. “Looks like what most 15 year old girls wear.” was her comment. I had to agree."

The Future (Probably) Isn’t as Scary as You Think - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "when Kasparov lost, there were several things that went through people’s minds. One is: well that’s the end of chess. It’s like, who’s going to play competitively because computers are always going to win? And that didn’t happen. In a funny kind of way, playing against computers actually increased the extent to which chess became popular. And, on average, the best players became better playing against the artificial minds. And then finally, Kasparov, who lost, realized at the time, that — he said, “you know, it’s kind of unfair because if I had access to the same database that Deep Blue had of every single chess move ever, I could have won”... the best chess player on this planet is not an AI. And it’s not a human. It’s the team that he calls centaurs; it’s the team of humans and AI. Because they’re complementary. Because AIs think differently than humans. And the same of the world’s best medical diagnostician is not Watson, it’s not a human doctor. It’s the team of Watson plus doctor"

Sangeetha's Gameplan - Seeking Asylum in Australia?

Having fled to Australia (probably because she got a grant to spread her hate), Sangeetha seems to be poking the Singaporean government once again with her usual series of half-truths, lies and mischievous insinuations.

Given a recent post (which sadly has 19 reactions), perhaps her plan is to attract "persecution", upon which she can claim asylum in Australia, which is considerably more progressive than Singapore since they indoctrinate schoolchildren into thinking that men is evil and that is why they get beaten up by women.


"4 Million Muslims Killed In Western Wars: Should We Call It Genocide?

Let us remember that in Singapore in the 1980s, Malay Muslim people were targeted for sterilization, and they continue to be told till now in many ways that births should be prevented among the community. Muslim people are targets of genocide worldwide, and we should start calling it what it is.

"In the wars that followed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. not only killed millions, but systematically destroyed the infrastructure necessary for healthy, prosperous life in those countries, then used rebuilding efforts as opportunities for profit, rather than to benefit the occupied populations. To further add to the genocidal pattern of behavior, there is ample evidence of torture and persistent rumors of sexual assault from the aftermath of Iraq’s fall. It appears likely the U.S. has contributed to further destabilization and death in the region by supporting the rise of the self-declared Islamic State of Iraq and Syria by arming rebel groups on all sides of the conflict.""


Nevermind that the "evidence" that "the United States and its allies" committed "genocide" in the Middle East is nonsense - taking the raw death counts in Middle Eastern conflicts and ascribing all of them to a deliberate Western campaign of extermination (based on a creative interpretation of a few words from George W Bush) is sophistry at best.

Nor that the claim that "the U.S. not only killed millions, but systematically destroyed the infrastructure necessary for healthy, prosperous life in those countries" is totally unsupported.

Or even that reading anything into isolated Americans' rantings would be considered "racist" and "Islamophobic" if one were looking at Muslims' opinions.

Sangeetha is plainly ignorant of Singaporean history.

What she is presumably referring to is Singapore's population control policies. However, these were not targeted by race:

Action was taken in the early stages of development to curtail fertility, a policy implemented in many developing economies to foster economic development. In the years between 1965 and 1984, population planning in Singapore was based on fertility reduction, through campaigns in family planning, sterilisation and legalised abortion using such slogans as ‘Stop at Two’ and ‘Two is Enough’. The aim of this blanket policy was to discourage large families, which were popular in all ethnic communities whether Chinese, Malay or Indian, by encouraging small families through a series of state incentives and disincentives. For example, after a family‘s first two children, maternity leave was restricted, delivery fees were raised progressively with the number of children and priority access to school places was lost for the third and subsequent children (for more detail see Saw 1990). The result was a vast movement of women into the workplace. This campaign, coupled with rapid economic development, was immensely successful and resulted in total fertility rates dropping from 4.66 in 1965 to an unexpected low of 1.4 in 1986 (Teo and Ooi 1996). --- The Gender Inequalities of Planning in Singapore / Gillian Davidson in Gender, Planning and Human Rights

With reference to the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), genocide is an act

committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group

Of course, Malays have historically had higher fertility than other races in Singapore, so they would've been more affected by this particular population policy than them.

Yet, if the disparate racial impact of a neutrally framed policy is evidence of racism (to say nothing of genocide), this works both ways.

For example, the GST Voucher for 2016 is given based on one's Annual Home Value.

According to Table 58, Resident Households by Type of Dwelling, Ethnic Group of Head of Household and Tenancy, of the General Household Survey 2015, 36% of Malay Resident Households live in 1, 2 or 3 room flats (which are the housing types which should have the lowest Annual Home Values).

This compares to 24% for the resident population as a whole and 22% for Chinese (and 25% for Indians).

Therefore I conclude that the GST Voucher scheme is racist and a secret government ploy to enrich the Malays at the expense of the Chinese!

Links - 2nd November 2016

Donovan Choy - The term “social justice” used to hold a precious... - "Today in 2016, the term social justice is but an empty shell of its former glory. In fact, the term “social justice warrior” (SJW) is used as a derogatory slang. How did such a term come to be so warped with negative connotations? One does not have to look very far on the internet for a prime example. Just last night, less than 24 hours ago, I saw a most curious development on my Facebook. An Indian lady by the name of Pooja Nansi was snarkily hassling local entertainment site TheSmartLocal."

Removing Curry Odor - "I had rented my condo and the tenants cooked with curry. After 13 months the cabinets were saturated with cooking grease and I could not rent the unit as the smell would drive prospective tenants away. I finally used turpentine to break down the grease from all surfaces in the kitchen, appliances, hardwood floors, everything. Then we had the place painted with Kilz and then final paint. This helped considerably, but the smell was still there and the unit unrentable. The final step was to have a company come in. They applied some type of microbial solution to all the walls and floor and appliances. Then ran an ozone generator for 5 days. We then aired out the unit for a day. It has been a month now and the unit smells brand new. The entire process cost almost $2300 between paint, cleansers and the ozone treatment.The microwave had to be replaced as you could not get into the workings of the unit to clear the grease"

Tenants that cook with curry - "non-Indians tend to find the Indian Spices smell unappealing - but also to the fact that Indian buyers tend to find an Indian Only house immediately More appealing in it's familiarity of smells. Smell is the most primal of senses."
"If you are in the rental business for the investment of your money looking to make more money than you must make a business decision when screening your tenants! It's no different than companies and corporations performing background and credit checks to determine the risk of hiring a new employee to further protect the owners/shareholders investments/money. If you, the landlord feel that those odors are going to cost you money and potential tenants now and in the long run, then you must decide and take that into consideration doing your screening process. Nothing racist, unethical, or in-moral about that, you're just an very conscious and protective business person! I work for a very successful indian couple who's net worth is well over $10MM and the very first time I talked to him about real estate investments, the 2nd thing that came out his mouth was he never do business with his own people because of the curry smell! And I'm being polite on his actual words! Ultimately, its your decision, profit & losses!"

Marah al-Bakri - Shot By Israelis, Exploited By Muslims - "As a supporter of both Israeli and Palestinian rights to freedom and sovereignty, I am constantly appalled by the violence, as well as the wanton lies and exploitation, by both sides. The Israelis though can take comfort that they are not saddled by the idiots that the Palestinians have to put up with. These idiots continuously diminish the Palestinian cause with their constant barrage of lies. As if there is no truth worth telling? Take this case of the 16-year old Marah al-Bakri who was shot by the Israelis on the 12th of October for allegedly stabbing a border policeman near Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem. The fact that a 16-year old girl was shot is shocking enough to generate outrage, even though she allegedly stabbed a policeman first. But no, these idiots had to change the story to something else altogether. Even worse, they changed it to something petty – the tudung (headscarf)... As a supporter of Palestinian right to self-rule and independence, I am constantly dismayed by the inanity of many pro-Palestinian supporters. The Palestinian cause is a noble one, a just one; but they chose to disparage it by spreading lies. In Islam, a false accusation is said to be the most wicked of crimes"

The word Aiyoh is now in the Oxford English Dictionary - "How many times does your answer to a question thrown at you in your day begin with “Aiyoh” or a variant of that? Or does the word creep into your day’s talk at some point? This expression is so widely used in that it is now in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)... “I’m appalled at the inclusion of this word!” says Shailaja Vishwanath, former English teacher and currently freelance writer-editor. “It is not English. At some level I understand they (OED) are adapting to regional usage. But at the level of a language, as a writer and editor, it hurts me deeply. I believe in purity of language for all its effect. I cannot accept these words in the OED, though I may use them in my everyday life within a context. But does their inclusion in OED validate it? I don’t know.... The OED included the laughing emoticon some time ago and it took me a long time to come around to accept that!”"

Bob Dylan's Nobel prize isn't radical. He's just another white male writer - "Giving the award to any white male writer, no matter what form he writes in, is in no way innovative or inspired. It is simply a return to the status quo – albeit in a different genre"
Comments: "I guess we are not supposed to give awards based on merit. We should give the awards to potentially less deserving people based on skin color and gender. That's the left wing for you. Pandering to minorities and women."
"An ant can bite an elephant but the ant remains an ant and the elephant remains an elephant"
"The continual drip-drip-drip of anti-male articles such as this may eventually produce a massive backlash."

Racial Discrimination Act: HRC accepts 18C complaint lodged by David Leyonhjelm - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) - "The Human Rights Commission has accepted a racial discrimination complaint lodged by crossbench senator David Leyonhjelm. The Liberal Democrat lodged the complaint over an article by veteran Fairfax journalist Mark Kenny that blasted him over his wish to see section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act abolished. The article, published last month, described him as an "angry white male"."

Swedish court allows the flying of ISIS flag - "Sjovalls said the waving of the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) flag cannot be considered hate speech because it is not an expression of disrespect towards any ethnic or minority group, for example, in the same way the swastika could be considered a symbol of racial hatred. Instead, IS are “against everyone except those who don’t belong to IS.” “Incitement of racial hatred is defined as the public dissemination of statements that threaten or disparage a group of persons with allusion to race, color, national or ethnic origin, religious belief or sexual orientation,” she said."
I thought ISIS was against everyone who wasn't their type of Muslim. That certain counts as religious discrimination

Never Again? - "I suspect too many people in the wider international community still only recognize genocide in this one most specific sense. They are always looking for Birkenau — expecting industrialized killing rather than seeing genocide the way it unfolds today. They ignore the evidence that in the right environment, simple machetes can be just as effective as rail networks and gas chambers... Definition is held to be paramount, when the real issue is political will."

Singapore gaming world champion Xian: ‘What we do is equivalent to sport’ - "Today, eSports games are broadcast by the likes of ESPN; US universities are offering athletic scholarships to gamers; teams are hiring managers and coaches; and the landscape includes match-fixing and performance-enhancing drug scandals. All of which makes a case for gaming to be viewed as sport - a point echoed by reigning EVO champion Lee “Infiltration” Seon-woo. “A lot of fans might think eSports, or Street Fighter, is something using your brain and fingers only,” the South Korean said. “But as I see it, it’s more like sports because you have to train hard to get physically in shape to play more, and play better.” “We train almost eight to 10 hours a day,” Ho explained. “We also do some exercise like jogging to make sure when we go to tournaments, we don’t choke. Because there it’s just a two to three minute game, and you cannot get distracted easily. It’s very important to at least have a good mindset and be healthy to compete.” Lee said injuries are commonplace. “My left-hand joints are quite sore sometimes. When I was practicing different ways to press buttons, I had some Band-Aids on my fingers because I was practicing too hard.”"

PERSPECTIVE ON CORPORAL PUNISHMENT : Would 'Caning' Work Here? No! : It's not a deterrent; it is discriminatory and cruel, and it would seriously harm our justice system. - "Fay's caning seems like excessive punishment to me. The Singapore authorities do not disagree. The caning may be overly harsh, they acknowledge, but it will, they say, deter other youths tempted to commit crimes against property. The evidence for this assumption is sparse and unclear. In 1960, a British Home Office research group (the Cadogan Committee) undertook a study of 3,000 cases of violent robbery, virtually the only offense where corporal punishment was still being imposed in Britain. The researchers found that robbers who were flogged were slightly more likely to be again convicted of robbery with violence than those who were not flogged."

Corporal Punishment - Effectiveness - Offenders, Committee, Robbery, and Cadogan - "The Cadogan Committee devoted special attention to five cases of corporal punishment used as an exemplary sentence in response to major outbreaks of crimes for which, according to public opinion, the penalty was particularly suitable. The committee found that in some cases the facts plainly contradicted such beliefs and that reductions in crime could just as plausibly be attributed to causes other than the penalties imposed on offenders. It also noted that the incidence of robbery with violence in England and Wales had declined steadily in the years before World War I notwithstanding infrequent and decreasing use of corporal punishment, whereas in the postwar years it had tended to increase despite a much greater and increasing resort to floggings. It was also shown that between 1890 and 1934 the incidence of robbery in England and Wales (where corporal punishment might have served as a deterrent) declined more slowly than in Scotland, where corporal punishment was not inflicted for those offenses (Cadogan Committee). ACTO also compared the incidence of robbery with violence in England and Wales before and after corporal punishment was abolished as a judicial penalty in 1948. The number of robberies reported to the police increased steadily during and after World War II, although corporal punishment was employed more frequently than before the war. After 1948, however, there was a marked downward trend, and until 1957 instances of robbery remained well below the 1948 level. The causes of this reduction were unknown, but ACTO inferred that corporal punishment had not been a strong deterrent immediately before its abolition and noted that abolition was not followed by an increase in the offenses for which it had previously been imposed (Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders). In short, no evidence proved that corporal punishment provided more deterrence than imprisonment, to which it commonly served as an alternative penalty before abolition. Canadian and New Zealand studies confirmed these findings (Canada, Parliament; New Zealand Department of Justice)."

Anti-Shiite Prejudice in Singapore and Malaysia: A Preliminary Study - "There has been a growth in prejudice towards the Shiite minority among the Malay-Muslims in Singapore and Malaysia in the recent years. This is reflected greatly online, on social media websites and blogs, as well as in the mainstream Malaysian media. Some seek to help Sunni Muslims “detect” Shiites by outlining certain stereotypical traits of Shiites, while others go straight to vilifying and misrepresenting the Shiite creed and practices. Such prejudice has also been manifested in concrete action, such as through persecutions in Malaysia, done in the name of protecting the sanctity of the Islamic faith and also in the name of national security."

Man interrupts bear sex, pays the price

Caffeine - "If you have problems with your PC locking or going to sleep, caffeine will keep it awake. It works by simulating a keypress once every 59 seconds, so your machine thinks you're still working at the keyboard, so won't lock the screen or activate the screensaver... Caffeine works by simulating an F15 key up event every 59 seconds. Of all the key presses available, F15 is probably the least intrusive (I've never seen a PC keyboard with that key!), and least likely to interfere with your work"

Woman inflates 13ft Ghostbusters Stay Puft man in living room; didn't think it through

Old Navy misses the point with 'sexist' Ghostbusters tees for toddlers - "when you go into the Toddler Girls section, the same design comes with the disclaimer: ‘Ghostbuster in training’... according to Old Navy, girl ghostbusters need sleeves (chasing paranormal activity can get chilly, ladies!), which will cost you an extra $1.05, or 80p."
Given that the one for 'boys' doesn't say 'Ghostbuster' (ni.e. ot in training) this is just the offence brigade having nothing better to do again. If having sleeves is sexist, what do we make of the fact that formal clothing for adult women doesn't need sleeves?

Teenage Boys With Tits: Here's My Problem With Ghostbusters - "The overarching problem with Ghostbusters is that the script is a greater abomination to God than any of the demons and ghosts in the franchise. I’m sure they could have done a worse job, but they’d have to study Tobin’s Spirit Guide to summon a script from an even deeper circle of Hell. Mostly, it’s a lack of intelligence. In the original movie, the bad guys weren’t actually the ghosts — everybody loves Slimer and the Marshmallow Man. No, the bad guys were the clueless bureaucrats in the government, who set off a supernatural crisis through bumbling and red tape. In this film, by contrast, the enemy is all men, while the government ends up playing dad. Every man in the movie is a combination of malevolent and moronic. The chick ‘busters shame the mayor so much they end up getting government funding at the end. Like all feminists, they can only survive by sucking on the teat of Big Government. I’ll skip over the vacuous and incoherent plot. You won’t understand it watching the movie and you won’t understand it reading my summary so who cares. This, unlike any movie I’ve ever seen before, seems to have been conceived entirely out of spite, with the result that its plot is largely irrelevant... Ghostbusters, the film acting as standard bearer for the social justice left, is full of female characters that are simply stand-ins for men plus a black character worthy of a minstrel show"

Why James Rolfe is on the Right Side of History for Not Wanting to See Ghostbusters - "Why are the Daily Beast, The Atlantic, Salon and various other outlets writing 2,000-word pieces tearing apart a YouTube film reviewer? James Rolfe of Cinemassacre (also known as the Angry Video Game Nerd) committed a fairly frivolous crime. He made a video calmly telling his fans why he will not be reviewing the next Ghostbusters... From watching Rolfe’s video he makes three main points – and strangely none of them have to do with women... So who will be on the right side of history here? The film critic who predicts a terrible movie — or the horde of Twitter bullies trying to ruin the man’s life?"

New Hampshire Safety Laws - Cell Phone, Seat Belt, & Car Seat | DMV.org - "There is currently no helmet law for motorcycle riders or passengers 18 years old and over in New Hampshire... Kids under 18 years old must wear a seat belt. The Department of Safety strongly recommends safety belts for every driver and passenger."
Live free or die

Paris’s women at war and the Housewives’ League

Paris’s women at war and the Housewives’ League | Podcast | History Extra

"Paris became a significantly feminised city... there were 2 million men who were prisoners of war, other men had gone to join De Gaulle and the Free French in London. There were a few men. If they were Jews they were hiding or perhaps in the Resistance but they weren't out on the streets in the day. So what you saw in Paris was women. And it was women who had to interact with the Germans...

Nobody who writes about this period in history is ever going to find people who collaborated to interview... 'Oh I thought the Germans were wonderful so I thought the Germans were going to win the war so I decided I would throw my lot in with them'. So I've obviously had to rely on diaries and letters, because a lot of people did collaborate... you have to break down the word collaborate. Now Petain was the first to use, Marshall Petain who ran the Vichy Regime was the first to use the word collaborate but collaborate means several different things and I've tried at every stage to show the light and the dark. Where I look for example at the Comedie Francaise, the French National Theatre. I show a woman who resigned on the first day because she couldn't bear to work in a theatre where Jews were not allowed to perform and Jewish plays were not acted and Beatrice Bretty [sp?] who threw in her lot with George Mondell and that's an amazing story...

At the same time, there were actors at the Comedie Francaise who continued acting and I don't think it's for me to judge them as collaborating. They did what they needed to do because that was their job. And if you take somebody like, for example, Marie Marquet, who after the war had to face charges of collaborating, her son was in the Resistance and she used the German contacts she had to try and persuade him not to commit a particularly dangerous action. She wanted to get him out of the Resistance because she wanted him to have a safe life. I don't think it's for me to judge her as a collaborator merely because she tried to rescue her son. And he was ultimately killed.

I think at every stage, you can find some sort of justification but there are more extreme cases. At the Opera, for example, there's Germane Luber [sp?]. She also, she was a Wagnerian soloist. You could say she collaborated because she performed with, to a specifically German audience so that was a more extreme case. What else could she have done? Her voice was coming to its peak, the Germans adored Wagner, the Germans believed that Opera was their sphere anyway. It's very difficult to imagine how she would have earnt a living if she had not performed on stage. Perhaps she might not have German salons, but you know, if you understand that singing Wagner was what she knew how to do, it's very hard to imagine her just deciding: I'm not going to sing.

Where after the war people tried to judge women who'd collaborated, this was a very gendered response and I think this is where I take issue with those who were judged collaborators, young girls who may have had a romantic attachment with a German soldier were immediately hauled in front of village squares and had their heads shaved or worse, they were made to parade naked around town. Maybe they even had a Swastika painted on their forehead. Now there were a lot of romantic entanglements because by some accounts there were between 70 and 100,000 Franco-German babies born.

That's a lot of collaboration or collaboration horizontale as it was called, but it's very different for the men. The men were often committing industrial collaboration. You know, there could be men who ran building companies. I know of a family, a Jewish family where they made barbed wire. And the granddaughter of that family says: I'm convinced my grandparents survived because in some way they collaborated. But if you make barbed wire and the Germans want barbed wire and that's your safety and you survive, hard to imagine what else you might do.

Of course, there are choices and some people made them. But it's just not such a clear-cut area and particularly for women, women who were exposed to the Germans and women who felt: if I sleep with a German, because sexual collaboration was rife at many levels, and sometimes resisters would sleep with the enemy in order to get a false document to be released, and I've got one story of an English nanny who slept with a policeman in order to have a letter posted to her parents to tell them that she was alive and she recognised that this was a necessary tradeoff.

So certainly sexual collaboration comes into it, but there's no question that the women paid an unequal price at the end of the war for collaboration horizontale, when men who were involved in the black market, men who were art dealers, men who were trading whatever commodity they could, did not always face the same punishments. They certainly had a trial whereas many of the women were judged guilty without even a trial...

[On Housewives] 'They were against the welfare state... things like school milk. I mean nowadays we'd think those are fabulous things'

'They were against the state because they saw the state, through the welfare state, trying to replace the role of the wife and mother. It was her job to look after the husband and the children and here was state saying: we can do this and there was a huge resistance to the idea that anybody could perform that function better than the mother. And that... explains why they were opposed to the distribution of milk in schools because it was parents' duty, particularly the mothers' duty to provide milk for the children and this was the state saying: no, we're taking over one of your roles and I think they saw, as I say, an immensely powerful time to be a housewife and they saw that power being chipped away. And I think it was largely a power struggle with this idea that anybody could replace the mother'...

'What we often hear is the sort of the feminist side of things, which is the housewife simply got absorbed into the labour market. Certainly the number of women participating in the workforce rose very dramatically from the 70s onwards. But what interested me... was to look at that period from the other perspective, from the perspective of the women who did lose out. The women who did want to be housewives and wanted to stay that way. Well, they fared very badly, were deeply resentful of what was going on'"

Links - 1st November 2016 (US Election)

The Dangers of Hillary Clinton - The New York Times - "The dangers of a Hillary Clinton presidency are more familiar than Trump’s authoritarian unknowns, because we live with them in our politics already. They’re the dangers of elite groupthink, of Beltway power worship, of a cult of presidential action in the service of dubious ideals. They’re the dangers of a recklessness and radicalism that doesn’t recognize itself as either, because it’s convinced that if an idea is mainstream and commonplace among the great and good then it cannot possibly be folly. Almost every crisis that has come upon the West in the last 15 years has its roots in this establishmentarian type of folly. The Iraq War, which liberals prefer to remember as a conflict conjured by a neoconservative cabal, was actually the work of a bipartisan interventionist consensus, pushed hard by George W. Bush but embraced as well by a large slice of center-left opinion that included Tony Blair and more than half of Senate Democrats. Likewise the financial crisis... Indeed what is distinctive about Clinton, more even than Bush or Obama, is how few examples there are of her ever breaking with the elite consensus on matters of statecraft."
Misogyny!

Gay Couple Say They've Received Death Threats For Supporting Trump - "the men told Bellini they’ve been asked to stay away from gay-friendly establishments and have received death threats from people angered by their praise for Trump. One message in particular, they said, told them to drink bleach."

Jill Stein thinks nuclear war is less likely under Trump. - "for us to step in and say, “No, we’re taking over here, guys,” that’s not consistent with international law. For better or for worse, international law gives a certain recognition to existing governments. So Russia is consistent with international law. We would be in violation of international law to go in and impose a no-fly zone, and effectively declare war against Russia for being in the skies there. Let me just clarify that in terms of the nuclear threat, Hillary Clinton is a disastrous nuclear threat right now in a context where we’re already off-the-charts in the risk of nuclear war. She has stated in this context that she’s essentially opening up a battlefront with Russia."

Hillary the Hawk: A History | Foreign Policy - "Should Hillary Clinton win the White House, the United States, already at war for 15 years, would be led by a president deeply aware and comfortable with the military. It’s impossible to know which national security crises she would be forced to confront, of course. But those who vote for her should know that she will approach such crises with a long track record of being generally supportive of initiating U.S. military interventions and expanding them."

Forget the Election: Why Hillary Clinton May Be the Most Hated President - "If not for the fact that her opponent is Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton would almost certainly be losing this election... the latest leaked campaign documents are damning in their revelation that the Clintons are exactly what their nemeses always feared: back-stabbing, calculating, venal, opportunistic. Regaining the public trust will be an uphill battle, and perhaps an impossible one, in this political environment. While there is no smoking gun that should prevent Clinton from becoming president, the latest WikiLeaks e-mails are unrelenting in their portrayal of Clinton as a purely political creature... the 2008 Clinton campaign discussed attacking Barack Obama for his past use of cocaine... The latest exchange to make headlines Monday includes an e-mail from Podesta, sent days after the San Bernardino terrorist attack, in which the Clinton campaign chair lamented that the shooter, Syed Farook, was not a white man—a message that her right-wing critics seized upon as proof that she had an anti-terrorism agenda driven by political correctness... As usual with the Clintons, there is the impression of impropriety, but no clear wrongdoing"

How Hillary Clinton Grappled With Bill Clinton’s Infidelity, and His Accusers - NYTimes.com - "privately, she embraced the Clinton campaign’s aggressive strategy of counterattack: Women who claimed to have had sexual encounters with Mr. Clinton would become targets of digging and discrediting — tactics that women’s rights advocates frequently denounce... Mrs. Clinton told Ms. Sheehy that if she were to question Ms. Flowers in front of a jury, “I would crucify her”... Mrs. Clinton herself took aim at Ms. Flowers in a June 1992 appearance on “The Arsenio Hall Show” better remembered for Mr. Clinton’s saxophone playing. Mr. Hall asked Mrs. Clinton about Ms. Flowers: “You know what her problem is?” “She’s got lots of problems,” Mrs. Clinton said."

Clinton’s Samantha Bee Problem - The New York Times - "the Democratic Party’s problem in the age of Trump isn’t really Jimmy Fallon. Its problem is Samantha Bee. Not Bee alone, of course, but the entire phenomenon that she embodies: the rapid colonization of new cultural territory by an ascendant social liberalism. The culture industry has always tilted leftward, but the swing toward social liberalism among younger Americans and the simultaneous surge of activist energy on the left have created a new dynamic, in which areas once considered relatively apolitical now have (or are being pushed to have) an overtly left-wing party line... Fallon’s apolitical shtick increasingly makes him an outlier among his peers, many of whom are less comics than propagandists — liberal “explanatory journalists” with laugh lines. Some of them have better lines than others, and some joke more or hector less. But to flip from Stephen Colbert’s winsome liberalism to Seth Meyers’s class-clown liberalism to Bee’s bluestocking feminism to John Oliver’s and Trevor Noah’s lectures on American benightedness is to enter an echo chamber from which the imagination struggles to escape. It isn’t just late-night TV. Cultural arenas and institutions that were always liberal are being prodded or dragged further to the left... She has moved further left than any modern Democratic nominee, and absorbed the newer left’s Manichaean view of the culture war sufficiently that she finds herself dismissing almost a quarter of the electorate as “irredeemable” before her donors. Yet she still finds herself battling an insurgency on her left flank, and somewhat desperately pitching millennials on her ideological bona fides. At the same time, outside the liberal tent, the feeling of being suffocated by the left’s cultural dominance is turning voting Republican into an act of cultural rebellion — which may be one reason the Obama years, so good for liberalism in the culture, have seen sharp G.O.P. gains at every level of the country’s government... [Trump is] occupying “a space in American politics that is uniquely transgressive, volatile, carnivalesque, and (from a certain angle) punk rock”... the new cultural orthodoxy is sufficiently stifling to leave many Americans looking to the voting booth as a way to register dissent."

FYI, Hillary Clinton did not actually tweet that ‘sick’ Donald Trump burn - The Washington Post - "Clinton’s “so, so real” tweet, her personal “slam”, the message celebrated the Internet-over for defying the impression that Clinton’s too insincere and/or manufactured, was actually engineered for just that purpose by a member of a team of highly paid experts."

How the P.C. Police Propelled Donald Trump - "To understand Trump’s seemingly effortless seizure of the public spotlight, forget about programs, and instead zero in on the one complaint that seems to unite all of the disparate angry factions gravitating to him: political correctness. This, more than anything, is how the left created Trump. I am not referring here to the daily political correctness that became normal after the 1970s, the reflexive self-editing that we’ve all learned to do, almost unconsciously, in the name of being nice to other people. This early “correctness” was always awkward and artificial, but it wasn’t overly onerous... Today, however, we have a new, more virulent political correctness that terrorizes both liberals and conservatives, old-line Democrats and Republicans, alike. This form of political correctness is distinctly illiberal; indeed, it is not liberalism at all but Maoism circa the Cultural Revolution. The extremist adherents of this new political correctness have essentially taken a flamethrower to the public space and annihilated its center. Topics in American life that once were the legitimate subjects of debate between liberals and conservative are now off-limits and lead to immediate attack by the cultural establishment if raised at all. Any incorrect position, any expression of the constitutional right to a different opinion, or even just a slip of the tongue can lead to public ostracism and the loss of a job. (Just ask Brendan Eich.) There is a huge vacuum left by this leftist attack on speech, and Trump is filling it... The great mistake made by both liberals and their most extreme wing on the American left is to assume that ordinary people, once corrected forcefully enough, will comply with their new orders"

Emory students distressed by pro-Donald Trump chalkings - "The president of Emory University said the school would review security-tape footage and potentially discipline students found to have written the name of Republican primary front-runner Donald Trump in chalk across the campus. President James W. Wagner said the university’s Freedom of Expression Committee is meeting to determine whether the name of one of the presidential front-runners in the two major parties makes other students feel unsafe and is thus punishable under Emory’s student conduct policy... After the student protesters made their way to an administrative board room, Mr. Wagner was called in to listen to their complaints, which included comparing the name “Trump” to Nazi symbology. “Why did the swastikas receive a quick response while these chalkings did not?” one student asked Mr. Wagner, referring to an event where the Nazi symbol had been drawn on a Jewish fraternity house... The editor of the Emory Wheel on Wednesday penned an editorial that denounced Mr. Trump as an “offensive man,” but encouraged students to engage with his ideas, rather than try to sweep him under the rug. “Institutionally prohibiting an ignorant, hurtful or violent idea does not destroy it; it allows the idea to grow and worsen in the shadows, far from the moderating effects of public scrutiny,” junior Zak Hudak wrote. “The best way to destroy an idea is to confront it.” Mr. Hudak continued that, if students refuse to confront difficult topics, then “we lose our purpose as a university.”"

Hero Saves Baby From Car, CNN Blurs His Trump T-Shirt

Trump is right about radical Islam: Raheel Raza - "There, I said it: Donald Trump is right.* With an asterisk. Before we get to that asterisk, you may be asking yourself: Why is a female, practicing Muslim human rights activist like myself saying what many in Trump’s own party cannot bring themselves to say? Because Trump is right. About certain things. Certain things about radical Islam, which I have been calling to the world’s attention for the past 20 years... I too proposed “a moratorium on immigration from Muslim countries for a set period till matters here settle down.” A year before he did."

Third parties could throw Clinton vs. Trump into chaos - "when voters were given a chance of which candidate to invite to their backyard barbecue, 47 percent picked Trump and 39 percent chose Clinton. Trump also scored higher when voters were asked who’d be better at creating jobs, at taking on ISIS and who was “more inspirational.”"

Donald Trump star vandalized; LAPD investigating - "Otis, an heir to the Otis family's elevator fortune, said in an interview with CNN on the Walk of Fame that he was vandalizing the star to help the 11 women who have accused Trump of sexually assaulting them, and other victims who he said could come forward in the future."
If people are violent towards Trump, it means Trump causes violence!

Australian street artist who painted Hillary Clinton in bikini covers her image in niqab after council complains - "The initial version of the mural, by an artist known as Lushsux, generated complaints from residents in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray after it depicted the US Democratic presidential candidate in a stars-and-stripes swimsuit with $100 bills tucked into her waist. The local Maribyrnong council deemed the mural sexist and ordered that it be removed within ten days. “We believe that this mural is offensive because of the depiction of a near-naked woman, not on the basis of disrespect to Hillary Clinton, and it is not in keeping with our stance on gender equity,” said Stephen Wall, the council chief executive. Lushsux then proceeded to dress Mrs Clinton in a full-body veil, writing alongside the mural: “If this Muslim woman offends u, u r a bigot, racist, sexist Islamophobe”... Lushsux has previously sparked controversy with his US election-related murals, including one showing Mrs Clinton and Republican candidate Donald Trump kissing and another known as “Melania and her two Trumps” which showed Mrs Trump naked above the waist with images of her husband’s face covering each of her breasts.

Donald Trump star vandalized; LAPD investigating
If people being violent to you means you incite violence, we can blame battered wives for inciting violence

LGBT Magazine Calls Peter Thiel 'Not Gay' Because He's a Trump-Supporting Republican - "LGBT Magazine The Advocate, the latest to target Thiel for his support of Trump, is arguing that he’s “not a gay man” because “he does not embrace the struggle of people to embrace their distinctive identity”... Weirdly, after calling out the founder of PayPal as not really gay for being a conservative, the article concedes that: “This does not mean that LGBT culture is homogenous or that all LGBT people have the same ideological viewpoints or values,” adding: “But it does mean that they all understand, on some level, the notion of gay culture.” Surely thinking for yourself is liberating, right?"

Gawker's Gizmodo Is Calling For Y Combinator Sam Altman's Head For Not Firing Peter Thiel - "This is despite the fact that Altman actually endorsed Hillary Clinton and attacked Trump... Is this the beginning of a witch-hunt in Silicon Valley?"

I Listened to a Trump Supporter - "I asked her if she supports Trump’s Mexico wall. She told me, “It doesn’t matter if I do. Hillary wants a wall, too. That wall’s gonna happen.” She wasn’t simply making this up. She’s heard this from many sources, Clinton being one of them... I asked about Trump not paying taxes. She said she wouldn’t pay taxes either, if the government custom-tailored tax laws to let her. I asked about Trump wanting to deport Muslims. She said she doesn’t believe he will. That he’s just talking tough. I asked what, if she hates Clinton so, she thinks about Trump’s campaign contributions to her. What’d she say? “That’s smart business.” She said if she could afford to bribe politicians to save her more money, she would too. But only because you must to stay competitive. She said it’s an awful system, but you can’t blame people for playing the game the way the rules were written. The people to blame, she said, are the people who wrote the rules. And those people are Clintons (and Bushes, and Obamas). I asked about Trump’s support of the Iraq War. She said she doesn’t care, that at least he’s willing to call it out now... A few times, she seemed ashamed of things Trump’s said or done. I’d ask her to unpack her feelings. She said he sometimes upsets her, but “If you wait and wait for a flawless candidate, you’ll never find one.” She said she’d be much prouder to vote for Trump if he’d tone down his rhetoric... No amount of insulting her from an ivory tower is going to change her mind. No amount of guffawing about her lack of education, her self-deception, her racism, or her internalized misogyny is going to change her mind. The only thing she’ll listen to is a promise of real change to the system that’s hurt her... this feels like the left is laughing at her for her unwillingness to get in line and support the things that have left her broke and broken."

Donald Trump may be dangerously ignorant, but I understand why Americans will vote for him - "I have never seen the US electorate more confused and uneasy, not just about what nearly everybody regards as the appalling choice of candidates with which it somehow finds itself landed, but about its own philosophical principles. Quite literally everyone we met was planning to use his vote either as a protest against the loathed alternative, or as a reluctant acceptance of a leader – and a programme – for which it had no enthusiasm. And this in a country where optimism, and the unquestioned belief in democratic institutions, was once a quasi-religious faith. The disillusionment of this election – and the obsessive anxiety which it has produced – will have serious consequences for the American psyche however it ends. But it is very important to understand the argument that came up repeatedly: this election and the forces that are driving it are more complex than they seem. Just as the Brexit vote was not only about immigration as its critics pretended, so the American antipathy to Hillary Clinton is not just about her notorious baggage (dishonesty, corruption scandals, policy failures, etc.)

The Ancient World: East Vs West

Jacobites and the Ancient World | Podcast | History Extra

"We're so used, when working in the Mediterranean world, to think about the sort of Civilised vs Barbarian dichotomy. The foreigners over there to the East are the Barbarians going all the way back to Herodotus obviously in the Persian invasions of Greece.

But when you look at some of the first reports of contact from the West further East and from the East to the West, actually the note you get is one of respect.

So from the West going East, at the end of the 4th century BCE, we have the figure of Megasthenes, who is the first official ambassador to be sent by the Seleucid rulers to the court of the Indian King Chandragupta Maurya Pataliputra and he writes his account of India as he finds it. His Indico, which is then recounted for us in part, by writers such as Diodorous Siculus and others.

And what's striking about his record of India is on the one hand, fanciful claims about ants the size of men and men who have their feet on backwards and things like that, but on the other hand, an incredible respect and admiration for Indian culture. He marvels for example at the fact that they seem to exist perfectly happily without slavery and that their society functions without much crime.

And on the other hand if you look at some of the sources from the East, from the world of the Chinese looking West, particularly in document the Hou Han Shu, the Book of the later Han Dynasty, in which there's a section on, a chapter on Western regions, talking about the first people to make their way West, and the quote there is fascinating: it says that the people of this country of the West are all tall and honest, and then it's goes on to say: in fact, in that they're quite like us. These are decent people and this is why that we've given the name to this far Western realm: Da Qin, the Greater Qin, which was a mark of huge respect coming from the Chinese world.

So in that sense it's quite a wonderful note, I think, that the first kind of records and mullings over of what the East is like from the Western perspective and what the West is like from the Eastern perspective is in both cases full of admiration and respect rather than the more typical are ones that we've seen over the centuries and sadly are still present nowadays of disrespect and of fear...

What's striking is for example that in the Greek story with the invention and then growth of democracy for example is you have an enormous number of sea battles.

Sea battles are very important, because everyone is rowing the ships. They are battles which reinforce the right of everyone across a society to have a role, a say in what that society does.

If you would look to China on the other hand or indeed to Rome, you would see an equal amount of war but actually much more focused on land, and in land battles you have a much more hierarchical system in which those that can afford the better weaponry or the horses tend to be more important to the battle and so battles and war in those worlds tend to reinforce traditional hierarchies"