Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber — Susan J. Fowler - "Over the next few months, I began to meet more women engineers in the company. As I got to know them, and heard their stories, I was surprised that some of them had stories similar to my own. Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company. It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being "his first offense", and it certainly wasn't his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his "first offense". The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done.
The Tao of bao: a randomised controlled trial examining the effect of steamed bun consumption on night-call inpatient course and mortality. - "Medical superstitions remain prevalent in today's stressful and technology driven healthcare environment. These irrational beliefs commonly involve night calls, which are periods of volatile workload. In Singapore and Hong Kong, it is commonly held that consumption of steamed buns ("bao") by on-call physicians is associated with increased patient admissions and mortality, due to a homonymous interpretation of the word "bao" in dialect... The consumption of steamed buns ("bao") has no effect on inpatient admissions, mortality, or sleep duration on call."
Take a bao if you are not superstitious. - "RESULTS: Sixty-eight doctors, nurses and medical students responded to our survey. Only 11 admitted to being superstitious, yet 31 believed in the ill-fortune associated with eating bao or meat dumplings, 6 in the nefarious powers of black (5) or red (1) outfits on call, and 14 believed that bathing (6 insisting on the powers of the seven-flower bath) prior to the onset of a call portended good fortune, in terms of busy-ness of a call. Twenty-four believed in "black clouds", i.e. people who attracted bad luck whilst on call, and 32 refused to mouth the words "having a good call" until the day after the event. We discovered 2 hitherto undescribed and undiscovered superstitions, namely the benefits of eating bread and the need to avoid beef, for the good and ill fortune associated with their ingestion.
DISCUSSION: Superstitious practices are alive and well in modern-day Singapore, the practice not necessarily being restricted to the poorly-educated or foolish."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Young to inherit more but in less equal amounts - "'Could it be more popular to tax wealthier old people to pay for their own care which they don't currently pay for often, rather than inheritance tax which is somehow seen by people as immoral'...
'The problem with inheritance tax is the perverse incenstives... it encourages people to spend more rather than to save and invest and to put money in places that can actually value the rest of society as well as their own family'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Joe Lynam - "It's often said you come away from CES with problems you never knew you had. Like how well you're brushing your hair"
The Aberfan disaster and women who made history | Podcast | History Extra - "Barbara Castle was my favourite MP ever... always very funny, always absolutely full of opinions and she was one who said to me one day: oh you know, Jenni, I think you young feminists go a bit far. I don't care, y'know, if they call me the chair or the chairman or the chairwoman or the chairperson, as long as I'm in the chair...
Margaret Thatcher was the most frightening interviewee I've ever encountered because I think it was her great delight to catch journalists out with being slightly loose with the facts. It would delight her to be able to tear you limb from limb so I've never been so well-researched as when I went to interview her"
Meryl Streep said nothing when... - "Meryl Streep said nothing when Obama's Justice Department was targeting reporters and intercepting their communications; she said nothing when Obama's Justice Department was arming Mexican drug lords, resulting in murder; she said nothing when Obama's IRS was threatening and intimidating private citizens because of their viewpoints; she said nothing when Obama's NSA was gathering a massive amount of telephonic activity by American citizens; she said nothing when Obama threw Israel over the cliff at the UN; she said nothing when Obama's policies (or lack thereof) contributed to the growth of ISIS and its genocide, rape, slavery, and torture; etc"
Words speak louder than actions
Every month, 20 SIA girls get pregnant - "if we didnt notice, the service sector & hospitality sector have been hiring pinoys & ahtiongs in droves. soon, we can expect to hear foreign accent lingo coming from SIA girls.
singapore airlines new advert tagline “帅哥，你要去吗？”
SQXXX pinoy SIA girl: "excuse me sirrrr, tank you for plying wip singaporrr airrlines, what woot chew like to driing por represh-meant, coppee, tea, or mee?""
Refusing to reverse, 2 women drivers face-off for 2 hours - "Two women drivers who found themselves on opposite sides of a narrow back lane and refused to reverse so the other could pass, found themselves in a two-hour face-off last week. According to a report by The Star Online, the incident took place at approximately 11am on Thursday in a back lane off Jalan Dato Abdul Rahman in Seremban town. A video of the incident, shot by one of the women shows the other driver flashing vulgar signs at her, then exposing her bra and later resorting to staying put in her car as she listened to music on her earphones. The video also shows a male passenger, who was with the other driver, getting out of the car and walking towards the woman listening to her earphones. He is heard saying, “Reverse lah. Reverse lah!” to which he received a middle finger flashed at him in anger by the woman."
McDonald’s Miri outlets remove halal-certified cake sign - "All McDonald’s outlets in Miri have removed notices allowing only halal-certified cakes to be brought into its premises, following the state government’s criticism of the rule. Commenting on the swift action by the fast food chain’s outlets, Michael Tiang, who is political secretary to Sarawak Chief Minister Adenan Satem, said: “Such prompt action by McDonald’s constitutes a wise move as well as a positive response to the strong objections among Sarawak people towards its recent unpopular policy”... "they received a further instruction from their headquarters to take down such notices so as to complement the tolerant spirit in Sarawak,” he said in a statement released yesterday. He urged McDonald’s to dispense with their latest policy as such a move was “not welcomed in the racial and religious harmonious society in Sarawak”. Tiang had previously said consumers were entitled to reject unreasonable requirements, and if necessary, would boycott the establishments. “It is always the Sarawak chief minister’s stand that racial or religious extremism has no place in Sarawak as the state practises a culture of tolerance, moderation and mutual understanding towards all races and religions,” Tiang said."
Looks like East Malaysia is Less Strict about Islam than Singapore
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, John Dalton - "Like most Protestants, non-conformists of all sorts were very committed to studying the works of God for themselves. Not, say, in contrast to the Catholics who allegedly believe everything that the priests tell them. The Protestant tradition is that you investigate God's works for yourself. And the point about this in relation to science: that God's works mean both the written work, the Bible, but also the works of creation. So there's a long standing interest in Protestantism in studying the natural world and seeing that as the work of God, and trying to understand the power and wisdom and benevolence of God through looking at the natural world.
So that's one thing that influenced this general Protestant interest in the natural world. But there's another thing I think specific to the late 18th century, particularly to non-conformists is that: think about what you could do as a leisure activity if you're in the late 18th century. Now, there's no television, there's no radio, there's no cinema. So what're you gonna do? You might read novels... you could do that. But that's fiction and lots of non-conformist traditions would frown on wasting your time on such idle frivolity.
And the theatre is not necessarily much better. And as for gambling, drinking, horse-racing, that's not really appropriate either for people from the stricter non-conformist traditions like Quakerism. So what can you do?
Well, one thing you can do study the natural world. It's a form of what was called rational recreation. So it's recreation, but it's respectable and rational recreation...
Public spectacle... what else do you do as a kind of leisure activity... you don't have football matches to go to. You go to hangings, you go to races and celebrity funerals... it's a big civic event"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Garibaldi and the Risorgimento - "Latin America... Democracy is taken for granted while everybody everywhere else in the world except the United States and Switzerland, democracy was a bad word. Was up to the 1870s was just unacceptable, like Communism and Bolshevism for a later generation"
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Should the West have intervened? - "We tried intervening and occupying in Iraq, and that didn't work. We tried intervening and not occupying in Libya, and that did not work. We tried not intervening and not occupying in Syria, and that did not work either. And that crude analysis is almost always followed by a shrug of the shoulders"
British MPs bear some blame for Aleppo tragedy, says George Osborne - "“Let’s be clear now: if you do not shape the world, you will be shaped by it. We are beginning to see the price of not intervening,” Osborne said... The inescapable reality, Johnson said, was that “we as a House of Commons, we as a country, we vacated that space into which Russia stepped, beginning its own bombing campaign on behalf of Assad”... “I think we are deceiving ourselves in this parliament if we believe that we have no responsibility for what has happened in Syria. The tragedy in Aleppo did not come out of a vacuum; it was created by a vacuum, a vacuum of western leadership, of American leadership, British leadership”... The Labour MP John Woodcock, a long-term advocate of intervention, said: “We’ve said ‘Never again’ so many times, and we mean it when we say it, but then, a few months, a few years later, it comes to nothing.”
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Singapore: Troop carriers held in Hong Kong should be freed - "Professor Simon Chesterman, dean of law at the National University of Singapore, said sovereign immunity should apply in this case. "Given China's strong position on sovereign immunity, which it has invoked in other jurisdictions for its own protection, it would be surprising if this matter is not resolved - eventually," he said."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, What does Sir Ivan Rogers' resignation mean for Brexit? - "He said... Don't be afraid to speak truth unto power. Well, the word truth is quite an interesting word. I would say actually the word should've been: the opinion unto power. Because I've had many times in the department where I've had civil servants sit in front of me telling me adamantly that some things can or cannot be done, and you look at that and you argue back and debate about it, think about it and then you come back and say there are different ways to do things and I don't agree with that and I'm going to do this. Ministers have to make those decisions. That's what they're there for"
Alibaba CEO Jack Ma meets with Trump, pledges to create 1 million US jobs - "The meeting comes just a few weeks after Trump met with another Asian technology powerhouse, Masayoshi Son the CEO of SoftBank. At that meeting, Trump took credit for a previously announced investment by a fund run by Son and said that the fund would help to create 50,000 jobs."
Jamshid Piruz who beheaded Dutch woman is allowed into Britain unchallenged - "A convicted murderer from Holland was able to walk through Britain’s porous borders without any checks and went on to attack two police officers with a claw-hammer... Court documents in Holland said he was ‘inspired by Taliban movies in which beheadings were seen’... ‘This offence was committed at a time of stress for my client. He was in a foreign country. He seems to have been vulnerable. He seems to have been hallucinating. ‘He was very confused by the vehicles driving on a different side of the road than he was used to’... it is not enough for an EU citizen to have a serious criminal conviction – if it is some time in the past, the UK may fall foul of Brussels directives if they refuse to allow that person into the country."