Links - 27th September 2017 (2)

Ang Jolie Mei, one of Singapore's few female funeral directors, shares her life in a book - "I joke that you can have a wedding and if you don't like the flowers this time around, you can have another choice of colours at your next wedding. For a funeral, you can have only one shot. So why don't we talk about this particular certainty and do it right?... I'm a salsa dancer, so I feel the best way to remember me is on a dance floor where they play my favourite Latin salsa music. I always wear boots when I dance, so I have a lot of those and a collection of fans. I would like those displayed. Every time a friend travels, they'll buy me a fan because they know it's something I always carry. I've actually already prepared a website where I've uploaded pictures of myself, videos, and messages that I'd want to show to my mum, so the site can be put up for visitors as well."

Did the Bard speak American? - "Shakespeare didn’t sound just like an American, but his accent was probably more NBC than BBC... To our ears, the actors’ accent sounds like a mix of American and Irish English, with a little Aussie thrown in"

Why We Read Sumiko - "Arguably, her introspection could be more nuanced. Yet, it is precisely the ordinary nature of her anecdotes that pleases her fans, who enjoy living vicariously through her stories and wholeheartedly embrace the quintessential Singaporean kaypoh spirit... Her legion of fans are also baffled when critics wish she would stop writing about ‘fluff’ in her personal column. They know that capitalising on uneventful moments is, without a doubt, Sumiko’s strength"

Social Anatomy of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Violence - "The odds of perpetrating violence were 85% higher for Blacks compared with Whites, whereas Latino-perpetrated violence was 10% lower. Yet the majority of the Black–White gap (over 60%) and the entire Latino–White gap were explained primarily by the marital status of parents, immigrant generation, and dimensions of neighborhood social context. The results imply that generic interventions to improve neighborhood conditions and support families may reduce racial gaps in violence."

Singapore office workers least productive among 11 countries polled - "The study found that Singapore workers spend only 60 per cent of their time on their main work duties, compared with a poll average of 72 per cent. Roughly 380 hours a year are spent on completing administrative or repetitive tasks. This is equivalent to 47.5 work days or two months of the working year. This loss of productivity is costing the Singapore service industry more than S$36.5 billion annually... Singapore office workers said the specific daily administrative tasks that prevent them from focusing on their primary duties include manually collating and entering data, tracking their project status, handling invoices as well as submitting their expenses and planning travel."

Sperm tested as possible candidate for delivering cancer medications in female patients - "they coaxed sperm cells to swim into a very tiny helmet coated with iron that would adhere to its head. The sperm could then be steered using an external magnet. The helmet was designed with a quick-release mechanism that allowed it to dislodge from the sperm when it ran head first into something, such as a tumor cell, allowing the sperm cell to penetrate the tumor cell the same way it would an egg, delivering the drug. The researchers also found that they could cause a sperm cell to absorb a cancer drug simply by soaking it in a solution containing the drug."

Is It Racist to Say Africa Has ‘Civilizational’ Problems? | Foreign Policy - "by assuming the worst of Macron — and refusing to engage with his broader analysis of Africa’s foibles — his critics are guilty of the same intellectual laziness they often ascribe to those parroting easy stereotypes about Africa. Macron pointed to three major challenges facing the continent today: demography, democracy, and failing states. He was right on all counts... The rosy economic future projected during the heyday of the “Africa rising” buzz in the early 2000s now looks far too optimistic: Recent World Bank projections have sub-Saharan Africa’s economies growing “only slightly” above population growth, “a pace that hampers efforts to boost employment and reduce poverty.” That’s not racism; that’s reality... about half of all Africans live in a fragile state... Whenever a white politician or other high-profile figure portrays Africa in an unflattering manner, a common reaction among African intellectuals is to emphasize colonialism and slavery as the “root cause” of whatever problem is being highlighted. Disagreement with this viewpoint is typically attributed to racism or a desire to ignore the crimes of Europe’s imperial past... Countries like Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan were colonies until the mid-20th century, but all have since done pretty well for themselves. So have the oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf, such as Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar — all former British “protectorates” and all now boasting the kind of ultramodern infrastructure many British cities can only envy. What is preventing Equatorial Guinea, which has a population of 1.2 million and is sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest producer of oil and gas, from becoming a developmental marvel in the model of the Gulf?... Defensiveness and denial are not helping the hundreds of millions of impoverished Africans living in want, insecurity, and fear. At best, this kind of attitude allows Africa’s middle-class intellectuals and privileged classes to avoid the public airing of uncomfortable and sometimes embarrassing truths about the continent where they live. After all, they are the ones who have the time and ability to take to social media and voice outrage anytime they feel that Africa is being slighted. It is perfectly acceptable for Africans to demand respect from Western leaders. But they should also strive to earn it through economic success — just as Asia has done in recent decades. But to achieve success, we must look inward at the real causes of the problems facing us, rather than constantly blaming them on racism and the legacy of colonialism."

Venezuela’s Road to Disaster Is Littered With Chinese Cash | Foreign Policy - "Officially, lending from Beijing comes without strings or concerns about nonfinancial matters. The reality is more nuanced... Beijing insisted on being repaid in oil. With most lending agreed to when oil hovered at more than $100 a barrel, as it did for most of 2007-2014, it seemed a good deal for both sides. However, when oil dropped to close to $30 a barrel in January 2016, this caused Venezuela’s price tag for serving its debt to explode. To repay Beijing today, Venezuela must now ship two barrels of oil for every one it originally agreed to... Beijing likes to cite the Marshall Plan when talking about the BRI, but its deals are far more shrewd and self-serving. The BRI scheme isn’t offering concessionary lending or international aid but market-based lending rates with high-interest loans. The borrower countries then have to use Chinese firms, inputs, and workers to build out their railways and ports. China is making the loans not out of a long-sighted vision of a better global order, as its boosters like to claim, but from a calculation of the financial incentives it needs to keep its own over-indebted firms afloat and their workers working."

How Real Is That Ruin? Don't Ask, the Locals Say - The New York Times - ""You have a legitimate archaeological site and inside you have a lot of pieces that are architectural objects that were found and collected by the municipality many years ago," said Charles Stanish, the director of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has worked extensively in Peru. "It's become a cultural icon, and people get very upset when you say it's not legitimate, because there is obviously a huge tourist industry that has been built around it.""

DNA Tests, and Sometimes Surprising Results - The New York Times - "Bernard
Identifies as: Black; father is black and mother is white
His prediction: 50% European, 50% African
His comments before the test: My mother said, “I know you are me, but no cop is going to take the time to find out your mother is white.” She was very specific about raising me as a black man.
Results: 91% European, 5% Middle Eastern, 2% Hispanic; less than 1% African and Asian
Thoughts about his ancestry results: What are you trying to do to me? You have caused a lot of problems in my family. I know my nose is sharp and my skin is light, but my politics are as black as night. Today, I don’t identify as mixed. I reject my white privilege in a racist America. There is no way that I or my kids will identify as anything other than black."
Identity Politics poisons everything

M.M.A. Fighter’s Pummeling of Tai Chi Master Rattles China - The New York Times - "For weeks, the mixed martial arts fighter Xu Xiaodong had been taunting masters of the traditional Chinese martial arts, dismissing them as overly commercialized frauds, and challenging them to put up or shut up. After one of them — Wei Lei, a practitioner of the “thunder style” of tai chi — accepted the challenge, Mr. Xu flattened him in about 10 seconds. Mr. Xu may have proved his point, but he was unprepared for the ensuing outrage. When video of the drubbing went viral, many Chinese were deeply offended by what they saw as an insult to a cornerstone of traditional Chinese culture. The state-run Chinese Wushu Association posted a statement on its website saying the fight “violates the morals of martial arts.” The Chinese Boxing Association issued similar criticism. An article by Xinhua, the state news agency, called Mr. Xu a “crazy guy”... The reaction has been so furious that Mr. Xu has gone into hiding... defenders of the traditional martial arts were incensed that Mr. Xu had dared to say that they staged impressive performances but were ineffective fighters and that, by doing so, he had threatened their livelihoods."
If you can't compete, harass

Middlebury, My Divided Campus - The New York Times - "The majority of faculty and students are progressive. A small minority are conservative; many of them are in the closet, afraid to speak their minds for fear of being denounced as reactionary bigots. If I might generalize about circumstances at my institution, the natural sciences largely see no place for politics in scientific inquiry; the social sciences and the humanities are another story. When it comes to a conservative like Mr. Murray, the majority here will start a discussion with “While I strongly disagree with Murray….” Even our president prefaced her introductory remarks at the Murray event with that qualifier. Yet few issued disclaimers about Mr. Snowden. People listened quietly as he condemned unprecedented forms of government surveillance. There was not one protester. In contrast, my willingness as a liberal to grill Charles Murray face-to-face was deemed entirely unacceptable... the event had to be shut down, lest the ensuing dialogue inflict pain on the marginalized. Never mind that “Coming Apart” explores the negative consequences of marginalization, one of which is the election of President Trump. As we strive for reconciliation at Middlebury, there is genuine pain on both sides of a campus divide. Students have expressed fear that they are not allowed to disagree with their professors, who might punish them with lower grades. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos may have no educational experience, but she was right when she told the Conservative Political Action Conference that professors should not tell students “what to say, and more ominously, what to think.” The moderate middle at Middlebury currently feels it cannot speak out on the side of free inquiry without fear of being socially ostracized as racist. Most alarming, I have heard some students and faculty denounce reason and logic as manifestations of white supremacy. This is not a productive learning environment for anyone. This is not what the life of the mind is supposed to provide... At Middlebury today, however, a perceived schism exists on liberal education’s purposes. One side sees the free exchange of ideas as fundamental and nonnegotiable. The other sees inclusivity and social justice as the supreme value. As Middlebury’s president argued at a recent faculty meeting, the two goals are intertwined. Freedom of speech and assembly protect everyone, especially minority opinion. The struggle for equality before the law, safeguarded by the Constitution, has been a means to greater inclusivity and social justice"

Elon Musk Says Artificial Intelligence Is the 'Greatest Risk We Face as a Civilization' - "“[They] could start a war by doing fake news and spoofing email accounts and fake press releases, and just by manipulating information,” he said. “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Musk outlined a hypothetical situation, for instance, in which an AI could pump up defense industry investments by using hacking and disinformation to trigger a war."

Speak, Memory - "When her best friend died, she rebuilt him using artificial intelligence"

When Music Is Violence - "Lily Hirsch’s “Music in American Crime Prevention and Punishment” (Michigan) explores how divergences in taste can be exploited for purposes of social control. In 1985, the managers of a number of 7-Eleven stores in British Columbia began playing classical and easy-listening music in their parking lots to drive away loitering teen-agers. The idea was that young people would find such a soundtrack insufferably uncool. The 7-Eleven company then applied this practice across North America, and it soon spread to other commercial spaces. To the chagrin of many classical-music fans, especially the lonely younger ones, it seems to work. This is an inversion of the concept of Muzak, which was invented to give a pleasant sonic veneer to public settings. Here instrumental music becomes a repellent... When Primo Levi arrived in Ausch­witz, in 1944, he struggled to make sense not only of what he saw but of what he heard. As prisoners returned to the camp from a day of hard labor, they marched to bouncy popular music: in particular, the polka “Rosamunde,” which was an international hit at the time. (In America, it was called the “Beer Barrel Polka”; the Andrews Sisters, among others, sang it.) Levi’s first reaction was to laugh. He thought that he was witnessing a “colossal farce in Teutonic taste.” He later grasped that the grotesque juxtaposition of light music and horror was designed to destroy the spirit as surely as the crematoriums destroyed the body. The merry strains of “Rosamunde,” which also emanated from loudspeakers during mass shootings of Jews at Majdanek, mocked the suffering that the camps inflicted... As Hirsch and other scholars point out, the idea of music as inherently good took hold only in the past few centuries... Although music has a tremendous ability to create communal feeling, no community can form without excluding outsiders"

How Progressives Belittle Violence Against Jews - "Around 2002 observers started to note that in Europe the openness and more frequent violence with which Jew-hatred was expressed began to belie the lessons of the Holocaust. A watershed report, Manifestations of Antisemitism in the EU 2002-2003, was commissioned by the E.U. agency charged with monitoring racism and xenophobia. “A rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents has been noticeable for almost all of the fifteen [EU] Member States since the start of the ‘Al-Aqsa-Intifada,’ ” it noted, singling out France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom for episodes that were “rather severe.” The report was leaked in 2003—after having been shelved owing to concerns that it made Muslims—who were a large part of the perpetrators in the worst countries—look bad... One perspicacious commenter noted that deBoer required a much higher standard of evidence for anti-Semitism than Islamophobia, a problem whose comparative severity he argued for by mere assertion... we in the West are inheritors of Enlightenment rationalism, and as such we find it difficult to understand and constructively respond to irrational political movements. In this respect “we are all Noam Chomsky,” Berman wrote in reference to the man who has done the most to advance this reductive Weltanschauung... Analyses of “structural racism” and “privilege” assert a kind of Wizard of Oz sociology that exhibits some elements of conspiracy theory—false consciousness, social determinism, and peoples of good and evil locked in Manichean struggle. In the mental shorthand of many, Muslims are people of color and Jews are white. That demarcation has fateful consequences... Anti-Semitism often “punches up.”"

Ten Times Democrats Glorified Violence Against Republicans Since Election Day

BuzzFeed Employees Joke About Trump Assassination - "“This was not the first time BuzzFeed employees talked openly about wishing President Trump would get assassinated,” asserted Treadstone, “they hated conservatives so much they even held an office party when Justice Scalia died. It was a toxic environment and you were declared a heretic if you were a Trump supporter, bottom line.”"