Links - 25th November 2017 (2)

Sexual Assault: US Military Bases - "Women’s sex work has long been used to help keep male troops happy—or at least happy enough to keep working for the military... Camptowns and prostitution thus became critical parts of a South Korean economy struggling to emerge from the devastation of war. South Korean government documents show male officials strategizing to encourage GIs to spend their money on women in Korea rather than Japan during leave time. Officials offered classes in basic English and etiquette to encourage women to sell themselves more effectively and earn more money. “They urged us to sell as much as possible to the GI’s, praising us as ‘dollar-earning patriots,’” recounts former sex worker Aeran Kim. “Our government was one big pimp for the U.S. military”... most Korean women working in U.S. massage parlors were once married to GIs. There have been more than half a million marriages between Asian women and male GIs since World War II; an estimated 80 percent end in divorce."

This Company Buys Every CD, DVD, And Video Game That You Don’t Want Anymore - "Decluttr buys anything–because that’s their business model. They will literally buy any CD, DVD, or video game you want to mail them. And they pay the postage, too."

Think about it... on 9GAG - "I'm so proud of being black!"
"I'm so proud of being white"
"It feels so good to be a woman!"
"I love being a man!"

American Millennials are among the world's least skilled - "Millennials in the U.S. fall short when it comes to the skills employers want most: literacy (including the ability to follow simple instructions), practical math, and — hold on to your hat — a category called “problem-solving in technology-rich environments.” Not only do Gen Y Americans lag far behind their overseas peers by every measure, but they even score lower than other age groups of Americans"

Emile Leray Builds Working Motorcycle in the Desert, with Parts from His Broken Car

Camille Paglia: How to Age Disgracefully in Hollywood (Guest Column) - "At the Billboard Women in Music Awards in New York City, Madonna was given the trophy for Woman of the Year. In a rambling, tearful acceptance speech that ran more than 16 minutes, she claimed to be a victim of "blatant misogyny, sexism, constant bullying and relentless abuse." It was a startling appropriation of stereotypical feminist rhetoric by a superstar whose major achievement in cultural history was to overthrow the puritanical old guard of second-wave feminism and to liberate the long-silenced pro-sex, pro-beauty wing of feminism, which (thanks to her) swept to victory in the 1990s... The truth, if Madonna can dare face it, is that she is having a prolonged midlife crisis like that of many great stars of the past. It is particularly painful for her as a dancer whose disciplined body always was her primary expressive instrument... If aging stars want to be taken seriously, they must find or recover a mature persona. Stop cannibalizing the young! Scrambling to stay relevant, Madonna is addicted to pointless provocations like her juvenile Instagrams or her trashy outfit with strapped-up bare buttocks and duct-taped nipples at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala in May. She has forgotten the legacy of her great precursor, Marlene Dietrich, who retained her class and style to the end of her public life."

Did we get more economic growth by giving up our freedoms? | Yawning Bread - "a friend mentioned to me how disappointed he was with his former classmates from Raffles Institution, a premier school in Singapore. Many have climbed to high positions in business and the professions since they left school. At the last general election, they told my friend they were leaning towards voting for opposition parties, but at the last minute, in the polling station, they changed their minds. “They said they were concerned about instability,” my friend told me. What the data above shows is that despite “instability”, Taiwan and Korea have done about as well as Singapore over the last nine years. Even Thailand!"

LGBT Opera Retrospective: How Similar Is The Opera World To Hollywood In Terms of Representation?
The rot spreads to classical music

When subtitles go wrong.. - Imgur - "How can you say you love her if you can't even eat her poop?"
This is from "Night Shift Nurses" apparently

Acetaminophen May Reduce Both Pain and Pleasure - "Previous research had shown that acetaminophen works not only on physical pain, the main ingredient but also on psychological pain. This study takes those results one step further by showing that it also reduces how much users actually feel positive emotions"

How to Make Roti Prata aka Roti Canai: Everything you need to know! - ieatishootipost - "I spoke to a patient of mine a while ago who happened to be from South India about Roti Prata. Many people have previously told me that the dish we Singaporeans call Roti Prata, (aka in Malaysia as Roti Canai) does not exist in India. My patient confirmed that it is not true. Roti Prata does exist in India, but only in a small part of Southern India and predominantly in a place called Chennai. Over there, this dish is simply called Prata. Indian migrants brought this dish to Malaya where it became known as Roti Prata. The Malaysians however, named this dish Roti Canai which means the “Roti” (bread) from Chennai.* If you still doubt that this dish is available in India, consider this: Most of the men who make the Prata in Singapore are foreign workers from Southern India. Do you really think that we brought them over to teach them how to make Prata? It’s like bringing the Chinese over and trying to teach them how to play Ping Pong right?... Once you have mastered how to make Prata, it is time to organize a Prata Party where you can invite your friends over to create new Murtabak (filled pratas) flavours! Some of the ones that worked really well for me were beef burger and cheese, parmesan and sugar, Luncheon Meat, Egg and Onions and Cornbeef, Egg and Onions.You can really go crazy thinking of all the wonderful flavours that you can put into your Prata!"

ieatishootipost - McDonald's curry sauce has quite a frenzied... - " I had bought a whole stack of McDonald's curry sauce (30 cents each) so that I can reverse engineer it. I would say that the texture and flavour is 90% of the McDonald's version. It might not be identical, but it is pretty darn close. My wife and kids actually told me they preferred my version over McDonald's when they tasted it side by side! I consider it a personal victory since they are often my harshest critics!"

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Stockpiles? What Stockpiles? - "The overall global picture tells us that as countries develop they tend to move away from emergency stockpiling... There are 4 basic reasons for having stockpiles. The first one is that at the end of harvest all the grain goes into storage and then it gets sold on and that's going to year end stocks that's owned by the market. There's emergency stocks for humanitarian aid. There are stocks that governments hold in case something goes wrong with food supply, food security stocks or buffer stocks. And then there are stocks that governments hold which are particularly to underpin food availability for the poor...
'What we know from climate change literature is that the supply of food is going to become more volatile because there are going to be more and bigger extreme weather events, whether it is rainstorms knocking crops over and flooding fields or whether it is drought and extreme heat'
'I hope those people who have warned you about that have also told you about the tremendous shifts and investment in food technology and particularly seed technology. You know my family has a farming background and it's been tremendous to note the resilience of the crops over recent years. In Brazil last year where we had adverse rainfall at the wrong time, we had heat at the wrong time and not once have we had a crop disaster'...
I grew up in a household with a very large pantry with plenty of beans and plenty of what have you in there. No, I no longer do that. I have a small London flat and I can no longer fit those in the cupboard...
I live in a country which is relatively rich. The idea of things going sufficiently wrong that we would not be able to access food for two or three weeks. If that is happening access to food will be I think the least of our worries"

Rebels of Google: Softball Interviews for Ivy Leaguers and 'Underrepresented Minorities' - "the predictive model they created determined that employees who received mixed feedback at the interview stage performed far better than those who received only good feedback. Those who were most likely to receive only good feedback (“inflated interview scores,” in the words of Chuck) tended to be Ivy League graduates or underrepresented minorities. Those who were most likely to receive mixed feedback (and, according to the model, go on to achieve the most success at Google) were more likely to be white and Asian men who did not go to Ivy League schools. The insider’s team had been tasked with the project by Google’s HR department, but according to him, they promptly shut it down once they realized its results would not serve their goals... Underrepresented minorities, says Chuck, were given guaranteed phone interviews with Google. According to him, this allowed Google to achieve any racial diversity quota they want by rejecting white & Asian males early in the process and assuming enough underrepresented minorities will be approved during the interview process... Google recruiters divide schools into “Tier 1” schools (elite institutions) “Tier 2” schools (reputable schools with large numbers of underrepresented minorities) and schools that Google does not visit."

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, The migrant journey to northern Europe - "If I stay here three years, how can you tell me to go back because now I don't have nothing. So how can I go back and start a life?...
'If they denied me now I might kill myself. I might hang myself. It is better for me to die here than I go and die in my country'
Last month in Italy three out of every five migrants had their asylum claim rejected but few will actually get deported. The risk is that they will stay with no rights. Part of a potential underclass of tens of thousands."
I think the blackmail only works if it's children doing it (and it's Sweden)

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele - "Three Australian brothers who were killed within two days and the mother chose the inscription for one of them because only one of them had a body. And so only one of them had a grave and in the inscription she chose: "a willing sacrifice for the world's peace" which I think is a very surprising inscription"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Under pressure: North Korea - "Well look. To think of the application of international laws of provocation is backwards in my view. North Korea doesn't need an external justification or an excuse. It is acting part, as part of a strategy, a big part of which is to extort economic aid and other forms of concessions from the international community. The international community not only has an obligation to work to push back but would be foolish to do otherwise"

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Prince Philip: 70 years of service - "Seven hundred and fifty, seven hundred and eighty organizations he is patron of... fifty five different uniforms he has got to put on at one time or other...
Napoleon once said if you want to understand a man you must understand what the world was like in the year that man turned twenty one. And Prince Philip turned twenty one in nineteen forty two. He reflects the values of that generation. And though he has been blessed, he had quite a challenging childhood. I mean his parents split up before he was ten, his grandfather was assassinated, his father was arrested in the year of his birth, the family went into exile, he had a peripatetic childhood. He never talks about these things"

Reserved election 'affirms values of multiracialism & meritocracy' - ""It shows we don't only talk about multiracialism, but we talk about it in the context of meritocracy or opportunities for everyone, and we actually practise it," she told The Straits Times in an interview yesterday. She said it demonstrates Singaporeans can "accept anyone of any colour, any creed, any religion, at any position in our society, so long as they feel that the person can contribute"."
???

The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page: Refutation of Bishop Berkely - "After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the nonexistence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it -- "I refute it thus.""

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Have We Cracked the Nut Problem? - "We know that allergies are increasing in urban environments and in certain societies. So for example in the UK and the US and Australia has seen these very dramatic increases in the instances of all allergies. The reasons for that are probably very complex but we know that certain things seem to be protective. So things like breast feeding for example is shown to be protective. Living in a rural environment, so living on a farm is shown to protect against development of certain allergic conditions. And also things, simple things like owning a pet for example... in very equivalent populations of children in the UK compared to Israel the rates of peanut allergy were dramatically different and one of the key observations of the population in Israel was that the children during weaning were fed a snack that contains peanuts"

The Stupidest Thing You Can Do With Your Money - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "you hire someone to navigate that for you — and they, in turn, use their expertise to pick the very best investments for your needs. This is called active management. They actively select, let’s say, the best mutual funds for your needs. And you pay them for their expertise. You also pay those mutual funds, by the way — sometimes there’s what called a sales load when you buy it; and an expense ratio, a recurring fee the fund deducts from your account. So, between the mutual fund fees and the investment fees, that’s usually at least a couple percent off the top — and that’s whether your funds go up or down, by the way. So hopefully they go up. Hopefully the active management you’re paying for is at least covering the costs?
FRENCH: What we actually found was the top 2 to 3 percent had enough skill to cover their costs. And the other 97 or 98 percent didn’t even have that...
BOGLE: There was this great poster that said “Stamp Out Index Funds.” There’s Uncle Sam with a cancellation stamp all over it, all over the poster. “Index Funds are un-American.”... The argument is, “In America, we don’t settle for average. We’re all above average”...
FRENCH: One of the beautiful things that happens out there in the market is price discovery, and I would never argue all prices are right, but prices are pretty darn good. We learn an awful lot about how resources should be allocated from what the prices are in the financial markets. If nobody is doing price discovery, we lose a really valuable service. What I always say is, “If it’s somebody I don’t like, I’m more than happy to have them go out there and spend their money investing actively because as a group, they’re making the world better off.”"

A Shocking Amount of US Millennials Aren't Buying Democracy – or Civil Rights - "Only a third of US millennials see civil rights as “absolutely essential” in a democracy, compared to 40% of older citizens. Poll results are slightly higher, but similar, in Europe. Likewise, only 20% of millennials agreed to the statement “a military takeover is not legitimate in a democracy”. A full 25% of American millennials said that democracy is a “bad” or “very bad” way to run a country, up 10% from 20 years ago, and double the rate at which European millennials responded in the same way... Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has warned that people will turn their backs on free and open markets if nothing is done to make those systems work for everyone"

Heart Disease and Diabetes Risks Tied to Carbs, Not Fat, Study Finds - "A large analysis published in 2009 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that swapping saturated fats with carbs had no benefit in reducing people's risk of heart disease. But replacing those so-called bad fats with polyunsaturated fats — found in fish, olives and nuts — did. "The unintended consequence of telling everyone to restrict fat was that people ate an even greater amount of carbohydrates"