Links - 24th June 2017 (2)

'Disgusting' and 'extraordinary' scenes as Chinese delegation shouts down welcome ceremony - "Participants at an intergovernmental meeting hosted by Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop in Perth have described "disgusting" and "extraordinary" scenes as the Chinese government delegation shouted over the welcome to country ceremony and forced the suspension of proceedings. A Taiwanese delegation was later ejected from the Kimberley Process meeting at the behest of the Chinese delegates who objected to their attendance... another session later in the morning involving a panel discussion with executives from mining companies was abandoned altogether because of continual interruptions by various African delegations in support of the Chinese position."
China's peaceful rise

Hospital administrators allegedly warn junior doctors that they are replaceable with 3rd world country doctors who are willing to work for $3K per month

YMI | My Heart-breaking Relationship with A Non-Christian - "In our first two months together, Alex and I got along really well. But whenever I brought up the topic of being “unequally yoked” and the need for him to convert, he would look extremely hurt and ask me not to talk about it again. There were moments when I wondered if we could just get married even if he didn’t become a Christian, but the Holy Spirit kept reminding me that believers should not be yoked with unbelievers. I told myself that if we were ever to get married, Alex had to become a Christian first. So I prayed for him every day and even fasted over him periodically."
The moral of the story - if you keep trying to force your partner to convert to your religion, your relationship will fail

Radio play with ‘ludicrous accents’ being re-recorded following online protests - "Singapore’s first Youth Poet Ambassador and Young Artist Award Recipient 2016, Pooja Nansi, posted about the reading on Facebook Tuesday evening (March 21), questioning the “ludicrous accents” of the voice actors, who play Singaporean Indian characters. One glaring example is the voice actor playing the protagonist’s mother, speaking in an accent that could be a far-fetched imitation of someone from Chennai, the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, but the character is Singaporean Punjabi... during the recording session, he asked actors - who are Singaporean - to amp up the ethnic accents"
If the actors had spoken naturally and sounded like Singaporean Chinese, people would be protesting too

Give priority, not exclusive privilege, to people with disabilities - "in crowded places, it is common to see a long queue especially for female toilets while the accessible toilet remains empty, despite the six-to-one ratio. So what makes people with disabilities unable to wait for the toilet? Take, for example, the designated areas in buses and trains for wheelchair users. When a bus or train is packed, should not this designated area be occupied by the crowd, rather than be kept unoccupied for exclusive use by wheelchair users despite the demand for space?"

The Transformative Fungus That Powers Japanese Cuisine - "Koji is something of a celebrity in Japan, where fans can buy koji cell phone charms, read koji-focused manga, and celebrate the microbe on October 12, a.k.a. National Fungus Day. But, although it was the subject of the first biotech patent ever granted in the U.S., in 1894, it has not caught on outside of Asian cuisine. Until now"

Tabitha Leah Ritchie: Canadian arrested smuggling cocaine in fake baby bump - "28-year-old Tabitha Leah Ritchie was stopped while trying to board an Air Canada flight in Bogota after an inspector noted that her belly was unusually cold and hard. He says police discovered a false belly made of latex taped to her body and they found 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of cocaine"

Stop Preordering Video Games - "By getting your commitment to purchase a game in advance, when all you’ve got to go on is a marketing campaign, you’re signaling that you’re totally cool spending $40-$60 on a game simply on the strength of how it’s been marketed. Time was, you could download a demo of a game and try it out at home. Why have demos more or less ceased to exist? Preorders are why. Want to know why exclusive missions and items are withheld from everyone’s game and are instead sprinkled across various competing retailers? Preorders are why. Want to know why it’s now accepted that you can sometimes pay more for a multiplayer game and start with a competitive advantage? Preorders are why."

Couple gets caught having sex in park - but the judge’s punishment shocks the whole court - "For 21 years, this charismatic judge has practiced something he calls "creative justice," where he gives unexpected but fitting punishments to those found guilty... A man insulted police and called them "pigs." As a punishment, he had to stand on a street corner with a 350-pund pig (170 kg) and hold with a sign saying "This is not a police officer.""

The Golden Ratio: Design’s Biggest Myth - "The golden ratio’s aesthetic bona fides are an urban legend, a myth, a design unicorn. Many designers don’t use it, and if they do, they vastly discount its importance. There’s also no science to really back it up. Those who believe the golden ratio is the hidden math behind beauty are falling for a 150-year-old scam."

Saudi Man Sentenced to Death After Declaring Himself an Atheist in Online Video

Patient dies after 54 years in same Airdrie hospital - "He only ever learned how to say three words again - his three loves - 'home', 'pub' and 'horses'. "We often took him on holidays in Britain and the hospital knew how much he loved the pub so they would even take him there now and again.""

Cyberbullying of Teachers - "Children as young as seven are posting abusive and damaging comments about their teachers on social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter, according to new research. Even worse, some of the children's parents are adding their comments to what constitutes a serious escalation in the cyber-bullying of educators. The British teaching union NASUWT conducted a survey of more than 7,500 teachers. It found that almost half of teachers had reported abuse to the school, police or the website on which the insults were posted. Other figures show that more than 20 per cent of teachers felt they had been cyber-bullied in the past year. Three per cent of the comments were from under-elevens."

Child refugees in Turkey making clothes for UK shops - "Marks and Spencer says its inspections have not found a single Syrian refugee working in its supply chain in Turkey. But Panorama found seven Syrians working in one of the British retailer's main factories. The refugees often earned little more than a pound an hour - well below the Turkish minimum wage. They were employed through a middleman who paid them in cash on the street."
Outsourcing!

'Heist of the century': Brazilian gang hits security vault and police HQ in Paraguay - "Brazilian gangsters have taken armed robbery to a lethal new level with a cross-border attack on a Paraguayan security vault and police headquarters using automatic rifles, dynamite and anti-aircraft guns in what local media have described as “the heist of the century”."

PARIS IS BURNING: Anti-Fascist Protesters Against Election Result Turn Violent, 29 Detained - "Following the announcement of the results, a large number of anti-fascists demonstrators went to the streets at the historic Place de la Bastille protesting the results. The protest quickly turned violent as the Antifa groups started hurling glass bottles and firecrackers and setting cars on fire. AFP reported that at least five vehicles were set ablaze... “We have come here to protest against the pantomime of this election,” one protester told AFP. According to The Telegraph, shortly after the results were announced, protesters arrived to the square waving red flags shouting “No Marine and No Macron” among other chants. Another 300 protesters gathered at Place de la Republique to protest the results."
"Anti-fascism" seems to be anti-democracy. As someone commented, ANTIFA = Anti-Freedom Alliance

Europe's youth don't care to vote—but they're ready to join a mass revolt - "Around 580,000 respondents in 35 countries were asked the question: Would you actively participate in large-scale uprising against the generation in power if it happened in the next days or months? More than half of 18- to 34-year-olds said yes."

Fyre Festival, Ivanka Trump, and other gratuitous misuses of philosophy - "Taking a clutch of quotes from Nietzsche, Stoics, and Utilitarians and using them to support an argument might sound nice, but “there’s no real regard to how totally inconsistent those three ways of thinking are"

Wikipedia's Jewish Problem: Pervasive, Systemic Antisemitism - "Israel-related articles almost uniformly emphasize the Palestinian and Arab narrative while marginalizing the Jewish one. Rudimentary facts about Israel’s history: including Palestinian massacres on Jewish civilians, Arab intransigence being a primary factor in the conflict’s intractability, and even the Jewish people’s origins and indigeneity to the land of Israel are either downplayed or outright erased. On some articles, it fails to recognize Jews as an ethnic group in the Middle East, whereas others engage in casuistry in order to present anti-Israel opinion as incontestable fact"

DNC Vice Chair Threatens Anyone Who Dares Criticize Anti-Semitic Activist Linda Sarsour - "Criticism of her views has been declared Islamophobia by Elle magazine, and others on the left have chimed in to denounce her critics... As the Democratic Party continues to tie itself to extreme personalities like Linda Sarsour with a leadership hellbent steering it into the rocks, it’s no surprise that moderate liberals are bailing from the listing ship."

'Seductive' dress gets girl barred from chess tournament - "A 12-year-old girl was forced to withdraw from a chess championship for wearing a dress that was allegedly deemed "seductive" by the organisers of the National Scholastic Chess Championship 2017 on April 14 in Putrajaya... A photo of the girl's dress that was shared by Kaushal showed the girl wearing a short sleeved black and orange striped dress that stops just above her knees."

Equal blame in Minneapolis bike-car crashes - "The city found crashes usually happen when when one or both parties fail to yield the right of way, or otherwise ignore the rules of the road. Cyclists were to blame in about 60 percent of crashes, as were drivers, meaning oftentimes, both parties were at fault"
Of course cyclists will just dogmatically blame the drivers

The men who live as dogs: 'We're just the same as any person on the high street' - "While the pup community is a broad church, human pups tend to be male, gay, have an interest in dressing in leather, wear dog-like hoods, enjoy tactile interactions like stomach rubbing or ear tickling, play with toys, eat out of bowls and are often in a relationship with their human “handlers”."

Cities need to plan for sex in public parks - "Project Marie was a six-week operation by Toronto Police that used plainclothes officers to find people soliciting sex. Police filed 89 charges – only one of which was criminal in nature -- against 72 people, the vast majority of whom were men. While some neighbours have balked at the fact that men are cruising for sex in the park, Jen Roberton thinks that if a city's public parks are to be truly for all members of the public, then cities have to design their parks for all users — including the men who have sex with men (MSM)."
Apparently it's homophobia if you don't want people to have sex in the park

Belarusian president accidentally sparks international striptease - "Alexander Lukashenko was talking about the importance of technology to the national economy when he urged citizens “to get undressed and work till you sweat”. But citizens took the words of their authoritarian president literally, and started posting pictures of themselves naked at work, using laptops and other office equipment to protect their dignity."

West Point Cadets' Raised-Fists Photo Sparks Investigation - "West Point officials are now investigating whether the image violates academy rules that restrict political expression while in uniform. The raised fist, which has long been a symbol of unity for African Americans, is also associated with the Black Lives Matter movement... “I would not have re-tweeted the raised-fist photo because I am well aware that our culture views a black fist very differently from a white fist,” she said. “I knew it was their expression of pride and unity, but I am old enough to know that it would be interpreted negatively by many white observers. Unfortunately, in their youth and exuberance, it appears they didn’t stop to think that it might have any political context, or any meaning other than their own feeling of triumph.”"
Naturally they got cleared. If they'd been eating fried chicken would they have been accused of racism?