Links - 27th September 2017 (1)

Britons still live in Anglo-Saxon tribal kingdoms, Oxford University finds - "Archaeologists and geneticists were amazed to find that genetically similar individuals inhabit the same areas they did following the Anglo-Saxon invasion, following the fall of the Roman Empire... There is also little Roman DNA in the British genetic make-up."

Disney's Aladdin Movie Slammed For Casting Non-Arab Jasmine - "Naomi Scott, who starred in this year's Power Rangers film, landed the role alongside Mena Massoud as Aladdin, and Will Smith as Genie. Scott is of British and Indian heritage and some critics of the decision see it as a suggestion by Disney that women of Indian and Middle Eastern heritage look the same. Massoud is of Egyptian descent. To be clear, Aladdin—the story of a rough-and-tumble kid from the streets who enlists a genie to win the love of Princess Jasmine—is set in fictional Agrabah, but it's largely seen as representing a Middle Eastern city."
Given that Jasmine's Palace is clearly inspired by the Taj Mahal and Agrabah is similar to Agra...
If Game of Thrones being fantasy means rape shouldn't exist (since it's a fictional universe where we can make up anything we like) why must Agrabah be in the Middle East?

Surprising Facts about Aladdin and the Arabian Nights - "In the earliest version of the story we have, Aladdin is a poor youth living on the streets of China. And he’s no foreigner abroad either: he’s a native Chinese boy, not an Arabian youth who’s ended up in China... when the story of Aladdin first appeared in the Arabian Nights, it was set in ‘western China’, with some scenes in North Africa (though that’s not where Aladdin lives)... Although Galland heard the tale from an Arabian storyteller, the Aladdin story is firmly set in China (so not the Middle East at all, but the Far East). The tale had nothing to do with the original One Thousand and One Nights tales, and doesn’t appear in any of the manuscripts. But, since Galland added it to his version, it has become arguably the most famous story (not) in the Arabian Nights... the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, and the story of the seven voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, are also not from the Arabian Nights, but were later additions by Galland, not found in the original manuscript. None of the three most famous stories from the Arabian Nights are actually, strictly speaking, from the Arabian Nights."
Cultural Appropriation!

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Banning Boycotts - "When organized fringe groups push their politics and bully and intimidate Jewish people, and in our study we found that eighty four percent of British Jews find the boycotting of Israeli shops and academics intimidatory and seventy seven percent have witnessed anti semitism disguised as criticism of Israel. That's no longer a boycott, that's an intimidation and a bullying tactic...
[On the planned bans on boycotts] It's just naive to think that universities and charities and all kinds of other publicly funded bodies are in the same position as a national government. They're not. I mean they have no right to use taxpayers' money to pursue their own obsessions or foreign policies. It's, that's not what local authorities are for. But we're not just talking about legal authorities here. We're talking about a whole range of publicly funded bodies. And can I just say I looked through the list of all the boycotts that are in place at the moment. About ninety nine percent of them were the far left. You know that this is not a weapon that is very often used by anybody else"

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Social Convention - "The whole point about these public space protection orders is that they are not introduced democratically. They are introduced very often on the say so of one council officer who has perhaps liaised with a couple of police officers. We've got evidence of quite a few councils who've done no consultation on the issue at all and in fact the first that people know about it is when they find out that these blanket bans on behavior have been introduced in their area and actually very often there's an outcry"

SINGAPORE WOMEN'S HALL OF FAME - Esther Tan Cheng Yin - "She is just 1.55 metres and of slight build, not exactly what you envision when you think of navy divers. But that is what Esther Tan does for a living. She is Singapore’s first female navy diver, and holds the rank of Major in the elite Naval Diving Unit. She specialises in search-and-rescue operations and explosive ordnance disposal... As a naval diver, she needs to be able to move around with some 39 kg of equipment, and you need strength for that."

This Adult Content Website Allows You To Log Into Your Account With A Dick Pic - "“Like a fingerprint and an eyeball, which are two of most commonly used body parts in biometric technologies, the penis has many, many differentiating factors like size, color, and vein protrusion,” Darren explained in a statement. “However, unlike fingerprints and eyeballs, penises are not exposed to the public a lot of the time and mostly kept under clothing and shared with loved ones—presumably who are trusted,” he added."

SJW insult - "Social Justice Warrior Insult Generator: “You're a chauvinistic, middle-class, heteronormative bigot!”"

More than 2,000 youngsters reported to the police for 'sexting' - "More than 2,000 children have been reported to the police over allegations involving indecent images, new figures have revealed. While some involve illegal child abuse pictures, the majority are thought to be young people sending nude photographs of themselves to boyfriends and girlfriends... an eight-year-old girl had been investigated by Lincolnshire police for allegedly uploading an indecent video to the internet, even though she was below the age of criminal liability."

The 'Hide the Pain Harold' meme model has no pain to hide - "An electrical engineer for many years, Arató was once Vice President of the Hungarian Lighting Society and "quite well known in these circles", but his engineering fame couldn't compare to his meme fame. I ask him if he gets recognised on the streets of Budapest. "Sure! Now it's quite often, among young people mainly"

Man revives woman with AED, branded a “pervert” for removing her clothes to apply electrode pads - "A man in Japan says he was questioned by police and branded a “pervert” after providing emergency medical assistance to a stranger. The man was attending to a woman who had been involved in a traffic accident when he believes someone who saw him cutting through the woman’s clothes to apply a defibrillator to her bare chest called the police and reported him for behaving inappropriately."

Disney is opening an immersive Star Wars Hotel where each guest gets a storyline

Minneapolis officer who allegedly shot Justine Damond offers condolences - "The officer implicated in the fatal police shooting of Australian national Justine Damond in Minneapolis has issued a statement extending his condolences to her family, as senior local law enforcement sources confirmed to the Guardian that Mohamed Noor, an officer with only two years’ experience, opened fire on the unarmed 40-year-old. Noor is one of a small handful of Somali Americans on the Minneapolis force and comes from the city’s substantial Somali community – the largest in America – that has frequently been maligned in the rightwing press."
This goes against multiple narratives. Maybe Black Lives Matter and CAIR will blame racism and Islamophobia for why he shot her

Identity Politics Trumps Reason in Police Shooting - "What is different in this case is that a Somali-American Muslim policeman Mohammed Noor shot and killed a blond, middle-class, white woman. In a sane world, the ethnicity and religion of an officer would make no difference to the public’s response to a police shooting. If indeed there is a police brutality problem in America, then you would expect people to be taking to the streets over this latest incident. Yet while there have been vigils for Damond, they are nowhere near the same scale as other incidents of alleged police brutality. Instead, some of the same institutions which have previously gone to bat for campaigns against police brutality are now more concerned about a potential backlash against the Somali/Muslim community than they are about truth and justice. There is no reason the ethnicity of the police officer should change the narrative, if the narrative is that the police have a brutality problem... Islamist-linked organizations have gone to great lengths to portray the Muslim community in America as victims of racism/white supremacy and to deflect any criticism of them with the charge of bigotry. This policy has created a toxic atmosphere which endangers truth. It’s the same attitude which saw ex-Muslims targeted at a gay pride parade in Canada and criticized at London’s gay pride parade because they dared to offend Muslims by speaking about Islamist oppression of gays."

New Doctor Who Enrages Feminist Critic - "Feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian, who harassed her critics during a recent panel at VidCon, took issue with the Doctor’s newest regeneration. Writing on the official Feminist Frequency account on Twitter, Sarkeesian condemned Doctor Who for being an “overwhelmingly white show” that simply isn’t doing enough to fix the issue of minority representation in the media–as if it is the show’s duty to address social problems... Sarkeesian strongly implied that the new Doctor must be intersectional–a transgender woman of color"

The real legacy of Trudeau’s Syrian refugee program - "Rafia told a Fredericton court that he didn’t know it was a crime in Canada to beat your wife with a hockey stick for half an hour... He was sentenced to eight days in jail and one year of probation... “Officials didn’t inform him of the differences in the law in Canada and that more should have been done to educate him,” said the interpreter. “Why didn’t they explain the law?” The battered wife defended her abusive husband, according to a Fredericton police statement. “Being assaulted by her spouse is culturally accepted (in) the country they are from.”"
Is it racist, sexist, ethnocentric and Islamophobic to condemn this, given that his wife defended him and said it was culturally accepted in their home country?

A Tweet Stirs Up Canada’s Immigration Debate - The New York Times - "Dawn Burke, chairwoman of the group that sponsored the Rafia family in the small town of Chipman, New Brunswick, said she used interpreters multiple times to explain Canadian laws, including those against domestic violence, to Mr. Rafia."

Elderly man drives 600km... the wrong way - "When the officers asked the man why he had not stopped earlier, he told them he just liked to drive."

What CNN's Threat to Dox a Redditor Tells Us About the State of Journalism - "news organizations have become obsessed with fighting Trump rather than covering him. For all the sanctimonious self-championing of the importance of journalism in the Trump era, stories like these have no real purpose... CNN claims it kept the poster's anonymity to protect his safety. Is it saying that anti-Trump activists will hurt the man? Is it saying that there should be no repercussion for things we say? Is this protection afforded all Americans? Moreover, the piece itself (and the on-air personalities at CNN) disputes the idea that his name was withheld to protect safety. It is clear that if HanA**holeSolo had responded to CNN by saying, "No, I'm not sorry, losers," he would have been outed... Since the tweet, I have watched many journalists act as if Trump called the Gestapo into action. This only a few weeks after an out-and-loud progressive taken in by the frenzy of the day attempted to assassinate Republican congressional leadership, a story most journalists dropped quicker than the middling Trump Twitter troll."

'Wonder Woman': New Details Emerge About Diana's Origins - "Jenkins explained the look of the Amazon armor. "To me, they shouldn't be dressed in armor like me," she said. "It should be different. It should be authentic and real — and appealing to women." That includes the use of high heels, an impractical decision she defended by saying, "It's total wish-fulfillment … I, as a woman, want Wonder Woman to be hot as hell, fight badass and look great at the same time the same way men want Superman to have huge pecs and an impractically big body. That makes them feel like the hero they want to be. And my hero, in my head, has really long legs.""
Lucky a man didn't say that

Mutations that arise in aging sperm add little to autism risk - "the researchers suggest, men who carry risk factors for the condition simply tend to have children late in life. Several large epidemiological studies from the past decade suggest that the older a man is when he has a child, the more likely he is to have a child with autism or schizophrenia"

Why Canada Is Able to Do Things Better - "The United States is falling apart because—unlike Canada and other wealthy countries—the American public sector simply doesn’t have the funds required to keep the nation stitched together... as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. put it, taxes are the price paid “for civilized society.”... Among the American right, by contrast, the conversation about taxes often seems infused with magical thinking. Specifically, it is imagined that even severe and abruptly implemented tax cuts will serve to actually increase government revenue, thanks to the turbo-charging effect on economy growth... when Kansas Governor Sam Brownback abruptly slashed the state’s top income tax rate by 26 percent in 2012, state revenues went into a freefall. Yet the notions that government is always a plague upon the economy and that lower tax rates will lead directly to growth and prosperity—which have together accreted into a core plank of U.S. conservative ideology since the Reagan years—still remain popular"

Advertising watchdog to get tough on gender stereotypes - "Advertisements that show men failing at simple household tasks and women left to clean up are set to be banned by the UK advertising watchdog. The Advertising Standards Authority will crack down on ads that feature stereotypical gender roles. Ads that mock people for not conforming to gender types or reinforce gender roles had "costs for individuals, the economy and society", the ASA said."
Liberal, Not Lefty: "Because third wave feminism is all about "choice" for women, right?!
Unless you choose to be a ballerina.
Or a stay at home mom.
Or are white.
Or pro life.
Or pro Israel.
Or Conservative.
Or voted for Trump.
Or are an LGBT conservative.
Or don't believe in hate speech laws.
Or do believe in free speech.
Or think "innocent until proven guilty" has to apply even in rape cases.
Or think gender and sex have an over 98% correlation for a reason that isn't just "socially constructed".
Then just f*ck you, am I right?!"

Living large in Japan is no laughing matter - "New government regulations mandate that anyone over 40 whose waist size is above a certain circumference must attend counseling. Meanwhile, employers face financial penalties if they can't reduce the number of overweight employees at their company."... Last year, Japanese lawmakers set maximum waistline sizes for people age 40 and up, according to a report on GlobalPost.com. If you’re a man, the maximum is 33.5 inches, and for women, the tape measure shouldn’t stretch past 35.4 inches"
How come women get to be fatter?