Links - 24th November 2017 (1)

Hidden costs drive up rent, price smaller shops out of Orchard - "Orchard Road is very boring because what is on offer as a shopping experience is no different from that of any of the large suburban malls. There is not much point in hyping up Orchard Road with the proposals mentioned if no one is going to shop there. While the suggestions for a milieu of smaller interesting shops are good, these shops can never afford the rent... the very high costs of development in Singapore. Some of these include submission fees, fees to engineers, massive development charges to the Government, and the high cost of construction and labour. It is not the landlord who is the beneficiary of all these fees and costs; it is the Government. I am sure landlords would love to have different offerings that would distinguish their malls, but unfortunately, it is the usual suspects who can afford to pay the rents to give developers a chance to recover costs and have some form of return for the risk they take."

Alt-right provocateur to dress up as 'mattress girl' for Columbia speech - "When he speaks at Columbia University next week, alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos plans to dress up as Emma Sulkowicz, the alumna who carried her mattress around campus to protest the university's sexual assault policies."

Hugh Mungus Social Justice Warrior Fail Nets Man $140,000 - "After thanking police at a September, 2016 Seattle City Council meeting for helping his addicted daughter find social services, and confronted by a frenzied social justice warrior who screamed out that she was sexually harassed by his providing a joke name, Rudy Pantoja Jr. has so far received over $140,000.00 in donations in a truly bizarre story of how sometimes being confronted by Precious Snowflakes can be not only immensely annoying, it has a potential for immense earnings... Unfortunately, it was not long before Joshi made a fool of herself once again before the city council, this time going after two members of the council. In a seething, insidiousness with almost a “yeah, we’ll be watching you” type of nefarious tone, she won another escort out of the building for causing a disruption. Of course, this occurred fittingly on Halloween. My favorite line: “After I spoke publicly against you, [councilwoman] the cops sent racist, white-supremacist, rapists after me.” I must have missed something. I wasn’t aware of the availability of the Racist, White-Supremacist, Rapist Service available to Washington Law Enforcement Officers. Were they listed on the car towing company rotation list or did I need to go through the State Patrol’s special operations bureau... she set up a fund drive for herself on the GoFundMe knockoff “YouCaring” to help alleviate financial costs inherent with being oppressed and suffering threats to her “safety”, or perhaps she just discovered another way to siphon money from other social justice warriors in a challenge to out-victim the other. She set a goal on YouCaring to raise one thousand dollars. Much probably to her dismay, many, if not most, of her contributions consisted of one dollar amounts. For a great many readers of this website, it was worth a dollar to lob insults at her"

Why Google was wrong: Did James Damore really deserve to be fired for what he wrote? - "it is not some twisted, crazy view. There are serious articles, published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals, supporting it"
If Peter Singer writes for the New York Daily News, does that make what he says wrong? But then again he's a white man, so he's automatically wrong anyway

SBS Transit bus captain hails from South Africa - "he has previously worked as a freelance business analyst here, but turned to the bus company for a stable job... Mr Ellis, who is Muslim, said he once received a packet of rice porridge from a commuter while he was driving during the fasting month of Ramadan this June."

I’m an Aussie banker. I’m shocked by ruthless recruiters in SG - "Recruiters based here (some of whom are Australian themselves) are much more aggressive. All they seem interested in are their immediate sales targets. They want you to move into a new job…fast!
ithin moments of meeting them, almost all the recruiters I talked to were asking very specific and very short-term questions: what banks do you want to move to? What pay increment do you need? There was little chat about the great opportunities before me in my brand new job or the skills I needed to further my career... several friends in Singapore tell me they have been contacted by their recruiters just months after starting new jobs. The recruiters had just received their commission from the bank, so they called up their former candidates looking to move them again."

How Much Do Romance Novels Reflect Women's Desires? - "9.5% of readership of romance fiction consists of men - maybe they want to figure women out... what baffled me the most was that the plots were rather formulaic: girl meets boy, boy isn't good enough, boy transforms, girl changes her mind and they get married. A little older and wiser, and trained as a researcher in psychology, I now ‘get it.' These books are candy for women's brains. The reader can live vicariously through the heroine and fall in love with the hero, but without any of the consequence. She's not cheating on her husband (most readers are married) because it's just a novel. She isn't at risk of becoming pregnant, but she can imagine the seduction by the hero. She gets the thrill, the rush, of falling in love, all for a few dollars. Authors of these books seem to know this because they rarely describe the heroine in much detail. Presumably, they want to allow the reader to get into the shoes of the heroine with some ease... The hero, in contrast, is described in immense detail... the hero changes. He starts off gruff, rude, arrogant, and cold, but with fantastic looks. In the middle of the book, he tries to prove that he's good enough for her, and that he's changed to meet her criteria. Something happens by the end of the 180 or so pages, and he turns into a man who wants to settle down and have a few children in a monogamous relationship. He's happy to be loyal and adore the heroine for the rest of their lives... basically, women are reading stories where they meet a ‘bad boy' or cad and then he manages to turn around and become a doting dad. She gets the best of both worlds!"

Romance Novel Fans: Life Imitates Fiction - "Women who read romance novels make love 74% more often than those who do not read the sexy novels... housewives who read romance novels were "more satisfied with sex than were non-readers of romance novels," according to a report in the November issue of Psychology Today."

The Texas billionaire's pregnant bride: An evolutionary interpretation of romance fiction titles. - "First, we identified the most frequently occurring words to determine the most prevalent issues addressed by titles. Second, we performed a qualitative analysis to identify the most popular, recurring themes that appear in the titles. Our results indicate that Harlequin romance novel titles are congruent with women’s sex-specific mating strategies, which is surmised to be the reason for their continued international success"

Romance Novels Bad For Women's Health and Psyche, Psychologist Says - "a recent survey of romantic novels found that only one in 10 mention condom use, Quilliam said. In fact, in many novels, the heroine outright rejects a condom because she does not want a "barrier" between herself and her hero, Quilliam said. The survey also found a correlation between reading romance novels and negative attitudes towards condoms"

Friends prank alcoholic friend into thinking he was in a coma for 10 years - "To pull of the prank, they took a small office and turned it into a hospital room"

Orange School board vote bans Bibles, Satanic material giveaways - "Orange County students will no longer face the possibility of being offered Satanic coloring books or Bibles between classes under a new policy adopted by the School Board on Tuesday night."

Woman watching 50 Shades of Grey in Mexico arrested for masturbating at movie theater

Evolution in teaching math since the 1950s... - "6. Teaching Math In The 2000's
Same question as number 5 but if you have special needs or just feel you need assistance because of race, color, religion, sex, age, childhood memories, criminal background, then don't answer and the correct answer will be provided for you.
7. Teaching Math In The 2020’s
Un hachero vende una carrtada de maderapara 100 pesos. El costo de la producciones es 80 pesos. Cuanto dinero ha hecho?"

MAN COMMEMORATES SG50 BY HAVING SEX WITH FIFTY S'PORE GIRLS

Verso - "The campaign endlessly touted endorsements from the ranks of the celebrity one-percenters, especially women. In the end, Clinton enjoyed a gender advantage only among the college-educated. Among white women without college degrees, Clinton lost to Trump by 28 points. It was almost as if waitresses in Ohio didn’t care that Anna Wintour was #WithHer.... The response of most establishment feminists to this national horror has been to blame the voters. Commentators like Amanda Marcotte are sure that Trump could only have won because men — and some women — hate women... Obama inspired Americans by talking about change and hope. Clinton couldn’t do talk about change because that’s not what she believes in, and she couldn’t talk about hope because hope is dangerous"

University hiring: If you didn't get your Ph.D. at an elite university, good luck finding an academic job. - "Just 18 elite universities produce half of all computer science professors, 16 schools produce half of all business professors, and eight schools account for half of all history professors... Because graduates from only a small number of universities account for the majority of faculty jobs, new ideas and discoveries from those elite institutions may be far more likely to gain traction in academia and in the wider world than those from outside this group. (Not to mention that bad ideas coming out of this core group of schools may get more attention than they deserve.)"

Faced with Angry Voters, the Elites Sour on Democracy - "The knee-jerk antipopulism of the comfortably-ensconsed politicians and their advisors isn’t necessarily wrong, of course. Many voters really are ignorant and many really do change their minds for no apparent reason. What these critics of referenda fail to understand, it seems, is that all their lambasting of the referendum process applies equally well to the process known as representative democracy. Or more likely, they do understand the contradiction, but they don’t care. The next time the voters vote “correctly,” the current critics of populism will simply pretend they had never criticized the voters at all... Many elected officials come to government with no particular expertise beyond knowledge of how to run a political campaign. There is no reason at all to assume that average legislator is better able to make “better” decisions than the general public on matters of economics, foreign policy or anything else. Indeed, veritable mountains of research how been amassed illustrating how government officials — both elected and unelected — are influenced by interest groups and personal biases. “Interest groups and pressure group politics” constitutes an entire subfield of political science. Moreover, as public choice theory has been demonstrating for decades, members of the government class tend to act in a way that benefits the very same government class."

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby told he was unsuitable 25 years ago - "He’s got an appealingly dry, self-deprecating wit, once describing himself in his archbishop’s robes as looking like ‘a self-propelled toadstool with a pointy hat’."

Just Because Dating a Woman Does Not Mean I Identify as a Lesbian. Fair Enough Just Because I Stare Through Your Window While You Eat Your Girlfriend Out Does Not Mean Lidentify as a Stalker Inequality Exists Because Standards Are Not Equal

German agricultural minister calls for ban of "misleading" labeling of "vegan" meat - "“He considers names such as vegan curry sausage and so forth to be misleading to consumers,” Jens Urban told reporters. “Clarity and truth, transparency for consumers, those are the measures that should apply for the labeling of all products, always and forever.” Asked whether the measures could also affect beefsteak tomatoes, Urban said that the ministry wasn’t aware of any “consumer confusion” about such products. In the interview with Bild, Schmidt – a member of the conservative, Bavaria-based Christian Social Union – also reiterated a call for schools to serve pork. Asked whether it was right for them to leave pork off the menu out of consideration for Muslims, he said that “we should not restrict the choice for the majority of society for reasons of ease or cost.” He argued that growing cultural diversity should lead to more choice, not less."

IWF - Alberta, Canada's Progressive New Government Bans the Words "Mother" and "Father" in Schools - "It used to be: "Heather has two mommies." Now, it's: "Heather has two non-gendered and inclusive caregivers." That's the language the New Democratic Party government in Alberta, Canada, is telling teachers and school administrators to use when adressing the adults with whom students are living. Out: "mother" and "father." In: "parent," "caregiver," "partner," whatever."

Swindling is part of Chinese trading culture, Muslim group claims - "The Muslim Consumers Association of Malaysia (PPIM) claimed that ethnic Chinese businesses regularly cheat Malay consumers as a legitimate way for them to get extra profit... He did not provide any data or statistics to back up his assertion... Isma asserted that it is only natural for Malay youths to release their anger on the Chinese traders in the popular tech mall as the Malays are known for running amok, and they would not have done so if they were not provoked by what the Muslim group claimed to be chauvinists."

China’s tough stance on India dispute raising concern across Southeast Asia, analysts say - ""People are asking, if China is really peaceful, why are there so many countries having disputes with China?"... “India’s standing up to China can only be a boon for Southeast Asian countries even when they don’t say so openly,” he said, “Any major power keeping China in check can only yield geopolitical benefits to Southeast Asia as the region is wary of China’s growing assertiveness.”"
In the Facebook comments a lot of people were slamming biased Indians for this article. Ahh, daggers everywhere

Appropriate to mark 200 years of the founding of Singapore - "Unlike Mr Oei, my parents and grandparents feel / felt neither shame nor humiliation with our colonial past despite having lived through the colonial era like Mr Oei has. Far from being subjugated, colonial Singapore offered many of our forefathers the opportunity to escape the poverty of their hometowns and to prosper through hard work and entrepreneurship... It wasn’t just colonial era Europeans who enjoyed privilege, colonial era towkays enjoyed privilege too. They may not wine and dine at the same places but they certainly had their own exclusive clubs like those on Ann Siang Hill. It isn’t as though privilege ended with the end of colonial rule... Mr Oei is mistaken in saying that Raffles came to colonise us. When Raffles came, there were only about 120 Orang Lauts in Singapore. There were zero Chinese or Indians for Raffles to colonise. Raffles imported tens of thousands of Chinese coolies to build up Singapore. While life certainly wasn’t a bed of roses for these early Chinese coolies, they came of their own accord, to escape poverty and to find riches in this land of opportunity... a great number of people living in Singapore during colonial times were foreign workers who were neither citizen of Singapore nor British subject until 1959. There was thus no onus for the British government to enrich the lives of non-British subjects during colonial times just as there is no onus for the PAP government to enrich the lives of approximately 1 million foreign workers in Singapore today. Mr Oei is wrong to say that colonial Singapore was a poor Third World country. Singapore’s 1960 per capita GNI of US$4,794 (Penn World tables with some conversion) in 2010 PPP USD was already within World Bank’s classification of an Upper Middle Income nation, one rank below a High Income nation but two ranks above a Low Income nation. Colonial Singapore was thus Middle Income, not poor Third World... Mr Oei unreasonably laments about Singapore slums in 1947, just two years after the end of the Second World War and the Japanese Occupation. Does Mr Oei seriously believe that Singapore could overcome the ravages of the greatest calamity that ever befell us or the world for that matter in just two years? Even for London, 1947 was described as a year of decay, decrepitude, sagginess and rottenness where housing was a disgrace"