PIERS MORGAN slams Meryl Streep's Golden Globes spech - "She began by saying that Hollywood, foreigners and the press are ‘the most vilified segments of American society right now’. At which point the cameras panned out to hundreds of the richest, most privileged people in American society sitting in the audience in their $10,000 tuxedos and $20,000 dresses, loudly cheering this acknowledgement of their dreadful victimhood... the reporter is hardly a powerless individual with ‘no capacity to fight back’; he’s a long-time Pulitzer-prize winning investigative journalist at the New York Times, a paper that’s trashed Trump for decades... To highlight just one example of Streep’s shocking hypocrisy, what about the 2003 Oscars when she leaped to her feet and gave child rapist Roman Polanski a standing ovation after he was announced as winner of Best Director for The Pianist?... At the end of her speech, Streep launched a passionate defense of the press. ‘They’ll need us to safeguard the truth,’ she said. Now, I’ve been a journalist for over 30 years. I love my industry, warts and all, and I welcome any support. But when it comes to the truth, many parts of America’s media were found severely wanting in this election campaign. Frankly, a lot of the coverage was a fact-starved partisan disgrace as they fought to see who could sink deeper into the tank for Hillary Clinton... It’s also a fact that no president in modern times has been so anti-press, or so intent on attacking press freedom, as Barack Obama, one of Streep’s heroes. Under his administration, the US government has set a new record for withholding Freedom of Information Act requests. Obama’s also used the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers who leak to journalists more times than all previous administrations COMBINED. So yes, the stench of hypocrisy throughout Streep’s speech was putridly pungent... Mark Wahlberg... urged actors not to talk about politics: ‘A lot of Hollywood is living in a bubble. They’re pretty out of touch with the common person, with the everyday guy out there providing for their family.’ Quite. Meryl, I still love you dearly, but you had a chance to bring your country together last night and you blew it"
Donald Trump Is a Jerk, but That Does Not Make Meryl Streep an Underdog - "Thus did Meryl Streep, a rich, successful, widely admired, award-winning movie star, implausibly portray herself as a vilified outsider while dismissing many, if not most, of her fellow Americans as yokels with no appreciation for "the arts" (which evidently include She-Devil and Mamma Mia! but not Monday Night Football). And where did Streep get the idea that Trump, a cultural liberal who is himself a representative of Hollywood as a reality TV star and producer, either embraces the social-conservative critique of the entertainment industry or wants to prevent foreign-born creators and performers from participating in it? Trump, who married a model from Czechoslovakia and another from Slovenia, floated several alarming immigration proposals during his campaign, but they did not include any policy that would preclude Ruth Negga, Ryan Gosling, or Dev Patel from working in the United States. Streep, a Hillary Clinton supporter who spoke at the Democratic convention last summer, has trouble distinguishing between Trump's actual faults and those of the cultural reactionaries she imagines populate the Republican Party. That confusion is necessary because she is determined to portray herself and her rich and famous friends as besieged dissidents"
Donald Trump's 'impression' of a disabled reporter may have been his 'default' put down - "Donald Trump was accused in November last year of mocking a disabled reporter - but videos of his other speeches suggest that he performs the same impression for whoever he mocks. Trump mocked New York Times journalist Serge F Kovaleskiat a South Carolina rally by making twitching arm and face movements - which the disabled reporter took as a personal slight. But pro-Trump website Catholics 4 Trump says that the Republican candidate has a long history of making similar gestures while mocking other people"
Teen jailed for blackmailing cop - "A TEEN waitress has been jailed for blackmailing a police officer she met on a dating website — after editing a video to make it sound like he was threatening to rape her... The officer, who was not named in court, said: “She has always been talking about money and asking for money. “I am extremely disturbed by this and feel it has affected me personally with trust issues and has made me realise how vulnerable I can be.” Judge Jeremy Carey said he had to put her behind bars for the ‘premeditated, determined and unpleasant nature’ of her behaviour. He said: “The officer is to be commended for the measured way in which he has expressed the extent of the impact upon him. “The reality is, as you well know, that he was particularly vulnerable because of his position as a serving police officer."
I like how he was called 'vulnerable'
Study explains evolution phenomenon that puzzled Darwin - "In animals with ornamentation, males will evolve out of the tension between natural selection and sexual selection into two distinct subspecies, one with flashy, “costly” ornaments for attracting mates and one with subdued, “low-cost” ornaments... Where do humans fit in? “I don’t want to push it too far, but the natural analogy is that individuals also can try to appear more appealing by spending resources on things that cost a lot of money -- expensive homes, cars, clothes or jewelry, for example,” Abrams said."
Her Tears Will Control Your Mind - "testosterone levels were lower in saliva samples taken from men sniffing tears than men sniffing saline, and arousal-associated brain areas were muffled by tears as well."
Blame the Rich - "the big houses of the British countryside before World War I often accommodated 10 to 20 servants, who were typically young, female and single. "Housemaid Heights," Betzig argues, functioned as a de facto harem for upper-class males. Thus an 1883 investigation in Scotland found that domestic servants accounted for almost half of out-of-wedlock births...
In the relatively stable British climate after 1200, with limited resources and little population growth, "the superabundant children of the rich" inevitably moved down the economic ladder, displacing poor families. And something of their privileged past went with them. "The attributes that would ensure later economic dynamism—patience, hard work, ingenuity, innovativeness, education—were thus spreading biologically throughout the population," Clark writes... There is, however, another way the rich may have helped make us who we are: by their knack for "extreme selfishness." Like many scholars, Brian Hayden, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, believed that leaders generally served the common good. Then he interviewed people in traditional Mayan villages about how their leaders had helped out during droughts and famines... Even if crediting the rich with the agricultural revolution seems like a stretch, Hayden has marshaled plenty of other evidence that triple-A types have repeatedly driven the development of new technologies for the purpose of displaying their prestige—textiles, for instance, and metalworking, glass, indoor plumbing and illuminated books. Then the sweaty mob imitates them, gradually figuring out how to make prestige items more cheaply and put them to practical use."
January Jones Says Her Son Doesn't Need a Father Figure to Teach Him 'Sh**ty Things' - "The former Mad Men actress says she’s a proud single mom whose son doesn’t need a father because she doesn’t want a man around the house to teach him “sh**ty things.”"
Amazon’s (AMZN) Alexa accidentally ordered a ton of dollhouses across San Diego
My Little Paris - Timeline - "Paris is your playground.
Leçon de voltige sur les toits de Paris."
Turns Out Getting Revenge Really Does Make You Happier
Was Iron Dome defense system actually built for Singapore? - "A Paris-based online magazine covering intelligence and security issues this week called Singapore one of the most important customers of Israel's defense industry"
Apple's new iPhone 7 lightning headphones rely on the company's most hated product - "Deep within Apple’s labyrinthine website, beyond its beloved laptops, phones, and tablets, is a class of items that are universally reviled. The company’s lightning cords were introduced four years ago to immediate disapproval that has never waned. On Reddit, Tumblr and, uh, Apple.com, people register the same central complaints. The cords don’t work. They break. They’re expensive and tedious to replace. The 1-meter version has a cumulative rating of 1.5 stars out of 5 on Apple’s website... Apple could still fortify the neck of the cord to make it more resistant to natural wear and tear. But to do so would impinge upon one of Apple’s top design imperatives: Minimalist design."
Indigenous woman yells ‘I hate white people’ before punching white woman, but it’s not a hate crime judge rules | Calgary Herald - "“There is no evidence either way about what the offender meant or whether . . . she holds or promotes an ideology which would explain why this assault was aimed at this victim,” he said."
Hamas leader's daughter treated in Israeli hospital - Telegraph
Iran opens theme park where children pretend to attack Israel and Western enemies - "The park is named The City of Games for Revolutionary Children... they are encouraged to fire plastic bullets at an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu."
Wedding brawl erupts after 'bride's ex puts incriminating photos on tables at the reception' - "One person said the bride's ex-boyfriend put photos of her performing a sex act at all the tables. That user said in the exchange: 'Brides [sic] brother thought it was one of the groomsmen.'"
Does Apple deliberately slow its old iPhones before a new release? - "The U.S. study analysed worldwide searches for 'iPhone slow' and found that the search term spiked significantly around the time of new iPhone launch. It then compared those results with similar searches for the term 'Samsung Galaxy slow', and discovered the term was unaffected by new releases from Samsung"
Growing evidence that autism is linked to pollution and babies are 283% more likely to suffer from the condition compared to other birth defects
Research news - Female animals look drab to avoid sexual harassment, study shows - ""If we accept the premise that males, while not as choosy as females, still exert some choice of mate then the question is why don’t females signal their sexual quality via ornamental sexual traits like males do?" said Professor Hosken. "We suggest that if female ornaments signalled their sexual quality, females could suffer increased sexual harassment by males and this could be especially costly to fitness." It is known that females go to great lengths to avoid male sexual harassment and signal their unattractiveness – by disguising themselves as males, moving to areas where there are fewer males, using anti-aphrodisiacs and fighting off unwanted copulation."
Sir David Attenborough and Brian Cox's shows are 'putting viewers off science' because the beautiful scenes reaffirm belief in god - "among religious people, feeling a sense of awe decreased their sense of a scientific order. Among non-religious people they were more likely to support a theory of evolution that emphasised order over randomness."
MUIS clarifies McDonald's statement on halal-only birthday cakes - "The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) has clarified that it adopts "a flexible approach" for the consumption of outside food in halal-certified restaurants, after McDonald's Singapore said that only halal cakes are allowed on its premises. In a media statement on Tuesday (Jan 10), MUIS said that in certain cases, such as with birthday cakes and baby food, customers can consume them at halal-certified restaurants. MUIS explained that food establishments with the halal certification "may exercise some discretion in such cases" as long as the following conditions are met:
- There is no cross-contamination and the item is not brought into the kitchen/food preparation area/storage facilities
- Only disposable cutlery is used
- The food item is consumed and any remnants bagged and disposed of immediately"
How to Never Get Lost in India | Giving and Getting Directions - "Warning: Should you choose to crowd-source your directions, remember to stop early and often. Some people will give directions, even if they are not sure how to get there, so you should double-check everything. Using landmarks will greatly increase the accuracy."
Carb your enthusiasm: Are bread, pasta and spuds making you fat? - "the National Obesity Forum, a UK body for health professionals involved in weight management, made headlines when it overhauled its advice... even wholegrain carbs, which are recommended, cause our blood sugar to rise, albeit more slowly than their milled equivalents. A slice of wholemeal bread raises blood sugar the same amount as three teaspoons of pure sugar... A jacket potato – archetypal healthy fare – is akin eating 9 teaspoons of sugar (although how fast it is released depends on what you eat with it – fat or protein lowers the speed)... In one study of 34 overweight people with type 2 diabetes, those on a low-carb, high-fat diet with no obligation to calorie count ended up with significantly better blood sugar control after 3 months than those following the low-fat guidelines for diabetes. Three times as many low-carbers were able to stop taking at least one diabetes drug as those on the standard diet... he received a National Health Service innovator of the year award, partly in recognition of the savings being made at his practice, Unwin says. Their per-patient spend on diabetes drugs is about 70 per cent of the local average... The role of insulin resistance, the key problem in diabetes, also seems to be a bigger player in heart problems than we thought. One recent study found it is a bigger heart attack risk factor for men than high blood pressure, high cholesterol and being overweight... when most vegetable oils are heated, they form toxic compounds called aldehydes, which have been linked to heart disease, cancer and dementia. So you might be better off frying in butter than sunflower oil. Many cherished beliefs about cholesterol have also turned out to be wrong. Too much cholesterol in the blood, especially a type called LDL cholesterol, can cause dangerous plaques to build up in blood vessels. But more recently we discovered that smaller LDL particles cause more plaques than large LDLs. And while eating saturated fat raises large LDL levels, small LDLs are boosted most by refined carbohydrates. That’s alarming because it suggests past research that used total LDL as a proxy for heart attack risk would be misleading – underplaying the dangers of eating processed carbs and exaggerating those of saturated fat"
Morocco 'bans the sale and production of the burka' - "Morocco has banned the sale, production and import of the burka, according to local reports. Letters announcing the ban were sent out on Monday, giving businesses 48 hours to get rid of their stock, the reports stated. There was no official announcement from the government, but unnamed officials told outlets the decision was made due to "security concerns"."
Is Morocco Islamophobic?
BBC Radio 4 - Today, 31/01/2014, French maiden name decision 'positive step' - "3/4 of married women in France still use their husbands' names...
I changed my name and I hated the fact that people felt they could criticise or even comment on that deeply personal decision. I don't think that it's the role of the state to tell us which name we should take or how we should run our families... Interestingly, the research I've seen tends to suggest the younger the woman is the more likely she is to change her name...
People are still thinking that it's, maiden name in fact comes from the fact that you were meant to be a virgin when you got married and in the 19th century, this was when women started taking men's names, it's because women were viewed as almost property and they were being handed from the father to the husband. Those are ancient battles that have been won by women. I think that's in the history books... Personally I think Ms is terribly ugly and I'm very happy to be a Mrs"
Friday, February 24, 2017
'Chinese Privilege' in Malaysia
Are Malay Graduates And Job Seekers Being Discriminated In Malaysia?
"Employers perceive Malays negatively, think that they have lower-quality education and always have the safety net in the form of government jobs to fall back on... Chinese resumes received a 22.1% callback rate on average while Malay resumes received 4.2% callback rate on average...
Malay resumes stating proficiency in Chinese get higher callback rates...
Calculated callback rates among Chinese, foreign and Malay-controlled companies. Malays get lower callback rates in ALL of them.
Even Malay-controlled companies favour Chinese applicants 1.6 times more than Malays...
Cultural compatibility and language ability matters. Employers with predominantly Chinese employees perceive that Malays are less likely to take jobs offered anyway (or quit within a few months), as Malays have the tendency to feel uncomfortable in these settings. The researchers theorise that Malays prefer environments where their religious customs and spoken language in work environment are catered to.
Malay applicants are negatively prejudged. This explains why BA Chinese get higher callback rates than AA Malays. No conclusive reasons are given, except that the negative stereotypes may be reinforced by past experience and lack of contact between these two groups to prove otherwise.
Appears to be the result of pro-Malay affirmative actions. People tend to think that Malays have lower-quality education and higher opportunities in the public sector anyway. This is a very complex issue, and further research are needed, but the researchers suggest that pro-Malay policies may in fact hurt Malay graduates’ job prospects."
What does it say if even Malay companies discriminate against Malays? Why is there "Chinese Privilege" in Malaysia, even with Malay companies?
What do you call a stereotype that's been backed up by experience?
Malaysian Friend: "Because there is no way to guarantee the kualiti of malay applicants in Bolehland? I hear stories of malay students getting into universities with piss poor grades and lecturers getting told to give passing grades to malays even with failing scores. Whereas most Chinese won't get into their preferred courses unless they have great grades and can't cruise their way to graduation"
Comments on post:
"I once was a recruiter. Yes. Companies can be racist. Some for solid reasons (have to diversify workforce or else everyone end up taking leave at the same time during Raya/CNY/Diwali)"
"as time passes and statistics are compiled, the market develop tendencies to isolate the best practices in order to maximize the chances to get good employees (so they can keep recruitment costs to a minimum). If statistics (and history) show that Malays are more likely to be bad employees, then said companies will shy from hiring Malays. Its that simple. Don't be so surprised, this system exist in the banks' loan systems as well. Things like race are definitely factored into risk calculations, and these numbers didint come about because some racist guy decided to put a higher random number on a race he/she didint like. These come from statistics painstaking compiled and refined by processes costing millions of dollars."
"This isn't discrimination, this is preference based on employees' experience with non Malay employees. One example, among many: Malay ladies need to go home to "masak untuk suami" while the Chinese mothers stayed back longer."
"I used to work for a Malay own company, and they favour on hiring non Malays more than
Malays. And the reason that my boss gave me was "melayu Malas."" [Ed: Malas = Lazy]
"How do you hire someone who considers it haram to shake people's hands?"
"Even Indonesian workers working here say that you pay a Malay RM10, he gives u only RM1 worth of work."
Addendum: The paper is "Discrimination of high degrees: race and graduate hiring in Malaysia"
"Employers perceive Malays negatively, think that they have lower-quality education and always have the safety net in the form of government jobs to fall back on... Chinese resumes received a 22.1% callback rate on average while Malay resumes received 4.2% callback rate on average...
Malay resumes stating proficiency in Chinese get higher callback rates...
Calculated callback rates among Chinese, foreign and Malay-controlled companies. Malays get lower callback rates in ALL of them.
Even Malay-controlled companies favour Chinese applicants 1.6 times more than Malays...
Cultural compatibility and language ability matters. Employers with predominantly Chinese employees perceive that Malays are less likely to take jobs offered anyway (or quit within a few months), as Malays have the tendency to feel uncomfortable in these settings. The researchers theorise that Malays prefer environments where their religious customs and spoken language in work environment are catered to.
Malay applicants are negatively prejudged. This explains why BA Chinese get higher callback rates than AA Malays. No conclusive reasons are given, except that the negative stereotypes may be reinforced by past experience and lack of contact between these two groups to prove otherwise.
Appears to be the result of pro-Malay affirmative actions. People tend to think that Malays have lower-quality education and higher opportunities in the public sector anyway. This is a very complex issue, and further research are needed, but the researchers suggest that pro-Malay policies may in fact hurt Malay graduates’ job prospects."
What does it say if even Malay companies discriminate against Malays? Why is there "Chinese Privilege" in Malaysia, even with Malay companies?
What do you call a stereotype that's been backed up by experience?
Malaysian Friend: "Because there is no way to guarantee the kualiti of malay applicants in Bolehland? I hear stories of malay students getting into universities with piss poor grades and lecturers getting told to give passing grades to malays even with failing scores. Whereas most Chinese won't get into their preferred courses unless they have great grades and can't cruise their way to graduation"
Comments on post:
"I once was a recruiter. Yes. Companies can be racist. Some for solid reasons (have to diversify workforce or else everyone end up taking leave at the same time during Raya/CNY/Diwali)"
"as time passes and statistics are compiled, the market develop tendencies to isolate the best practices in order to maximize the chances to get good employees (so they can keep recruitment costs to a minimum). If statistics (and history) show that Malays are more likely to be bad employees, then said companies will shy from hiring Malays. Its that simple. Don't be so surprised, this system exist in the banks' loan systems as well. Things like race are definitely factored into risk calculations, and these numbers didint come about because some racist guy decided to put a higher random number on a race he/she didint like. These come from statistics painstaking compiled and refined by processes costing millions of dollars."
"This isn't discrimination, this is preference based on employees' experience with non Malay employees. One example, among many: Malay ladies need to go home to "masak untuk suami" while the Chinese mothers stayed back longer."
"I used to work for a Malay own company, and they favour on hiring non Malays more than
Malays. And the reason that my boss gave me was "melayu Malas."" [Ed: Malas = Lazy]
"How do you hire someone who considers it haram to shake people's hands?"
"Even Indonesian workers working here say that you pay a Malay RM10, he gives u only RM1 worth of work."
Addendum: The paper is "Discrimination of high degrees: race and graduate hiring in Malaysia"
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Links - 23rd February 2017 (2)
Reflecting on one very, very strange year at Uber — Susan J. Fowler - "Over the next few months, I began to meet more women engineers in the company. As I got to know them, and heard their stories, I was surprised that some of them had stories similar to my own. Some of the women even had stories about reporting the exact same manager I had reported, and had reported inappropriate interactions with him long before I had even joined the company. It became obvious that both HR and management had been lying about this being "his first offense", and it certainly wasn't his last. Within a few months, he was reported once again for inappropriate behavior, and those who reported him were told it was still his "first offense". The situation was escalated as far up the chain as it could be escalated, and still nothing was done.
The Tao of bao: a randomised controlled trial examining the effect of steamed bun consumption on night-call inpatient course and mortality. - "Medical superstitions remain prevalent in today's stressful and technology driven healthcare environment. These irrational beliefs commonly involve night calls, which are periods of volatile workload. In Singapore and Hong Kong, it is commonly held that consumption of steamed buns ("bao") by on-call physicians is associated with increased patient admissions and mortality, due to a homonymous interpretation of the word "bao" in dialect... The consumption of steamed buns ("bao") has no effect on inpatient admissions, mortality, or sleep duration on call."
Take a bao if you are not superstitious. - "RESULTS: Sixty-eight doctors, nurses and medical students responded to our survey. Only 11 admitted to being superstitious, yet 31 believed in the ill-fortune associated with eating bao or meat dumplings, 6 in the nefarious powers of black (5) or red (1) outfits on call, and 14 believed that bathing (6 insisting on the powers of the seven-flower bath) prior to the onset of a call portended good fortune, in terms of busy-ness of a call. Twenty-four believed in "black clouds", i.e. people who attracted bad luck whilst on call, and 32 refused to mouth the words "having a good call" until the day after the event. We discovered 2 hitherto undescribed and undiscovered superstitions, namely the benefits of eating bread and the need to avoid beef, for the good and ill fortune associated with their ingestion.
DISCUSSION: Superstitious practices are alive and well in modern-day Singapore, the practice not necessarily being restricted to the poorly-educated or foolish."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Young to inherit more but in less equal amounts - "'Could it be more popular to tax wealthier old people to pay for their own care which they don't currently pay for often, rather than inheritance tax which is somehow seen by people as immoral'...
'The problem with inheritance tax is the perverse incenstives... it encourages people to spend more rather than to save and invest and to put money in places that can actually value the rest of society as well as their own family'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Joe Lynam - "It's often said you come away from CES with problems you never knew you had. Like how well you're brushing your hair"
The Aberfan disaster and women who made history | Podcast | History Extra - "Barbara Castle was my favourite MP ever... always very funny, always absolutely full of opinions and she was one who said to me one day: oh you know, Jenni, I think you young feminists go a bit far. I don't care, y'know, if they call me the chair or the chairman or the chairwoman or the chairperson, as long as I'm in the chair...
Margaret Thatcher was the most frightening interviewee I've ever encountered because I think it was her great delight to catch journalists out with being slightly loose with the facts. It would delight her to be able to tear you limb from limb so I've never been so well-researched as when I went to interview her"
Meryl Streep said nothing when... - "Meryl Streep said nothing when Obama's Justice Department was targeting reporters and intercepting their communications; she said nothing when Obama's Justice Department was arming Mexican drug lords, resulting in murder; she said nothing when Obama's IRS was threatening and intimidating private citizens because of their viewpoints; she said nothing when Obama's NSA was gathering a massive amount of telephonic activity by American citizens; she said nothing when Obama threw Israel over the cliff at the UN; she said nothing when Obama's policies (or lack thereof) contributed to the growth of ISIS and its genocide, rape, slavery, and torture; etc"
Words speak louder than actions
Every month, 20 SIA girls get pregnant - "if we didnt notice, the service sector & hospitality sector have been hiring pinoys & ahtiongs in droves. soon, we can expect to hear foreign accent lingo coming from SIA girls.
singapore airlines new advert tagline “帅哥，你要去吗？”
SQXXX pinoy SIA girl: "excuse me sirrrr, tank you for plying wip singaporrr airrlines, what woot chew like to driing por represh-meant, coppee, tea, or mee?""
Refusing to reverse, 2 women drivers face-off for 2 hours - "Two women drivers who found themselves on opposite sides of a narrow back lane and refused to reverse so the other could pass, found themselves in a two-hour face-off last week. According to a report by The Star Online, the incident took place at approximately 11am on Thursday in a back lane off Jalan Dato Abdul Rahman in Seremban town. A video of the incident, shot by one of the women shows the other driver flashing vulgar signs at her, then exposing her bra and later resorting to staying put in her car as she listened to music on her earphones. The video also shows a male passenger, who was with the other driver, getting out of the car and walking towards the woman listening to her earphones. He is heard saying, “Reverse lah. Reverse lah!” to which he received a middle finger flashed at him in anger by the woman."
McDonald’s Miri outlets remove halal-certified cake sign - "All McDonald’s outlets in Miri have removed notices allowing only halal-certified cakes to be brought into its premises, following the state government’s criticism of the rule. Commenting on the swift action by the fast food chain’s outlets, Michael Tiang, who is political secretary to Sarawak Chief Minister Adenan Satem, said: “Such prompt action by McDonald’s constitutes a wise move as well as a positive response to the strong objections among Sarawak people towards its recent unpopular policy”... "they received a further instruction from their headquarters to take down such notices so as to complement the tolerant spirit in Sarawak,” he said in a statement released yesterday. He urged McDonald’s to dispense with their latest policy as such a move was “not welcomed in the racial and religious harmonious society in Sarawak”. Tiang had previously said consumers were entitled to reject unreasonable requirements, and if necessary, would boycott the establishments. “It is always the Sarawak chief minister’s stand that racial or religious extremism has no place in Sarawak as the state practises a culture of tolerance, moderation and mutual understanding towards all races and religions,” Tiang said."
Looks like East Malaysia is Less Strict about Islam than Singapore
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, John Dalton - "Like most Protestants, non-conformists of all sorts were very committed to studying the works of God for themselves. Not, say, in contrast to the Catholics who allegedly believe everything that the priests tell them. The Protestant tradition is that you investigate God's works for yourself. And the point about this in relation to science: that God's works mean both the written work, the Bible, but also the works of creation. So there's a long standing interest in Protestantism in studying the natural world and seeing that as the work of God, and trying to understand the power and wisdom and benevolence of God through looking at the natural world.
So that's one thing that influenced this general Protestant interest in the natural world. But there's another thing I think specific to the late 18th century, particularly to non-conformists is that: think about what you could do as a leisure activity if you're in the late 18th century. Now, there's no television, there's no radio, there's no cinema. So what're you gonna do? You might read novels... you could do that. But that's fiction and lots of non-conformist traditions would frown on wasting your time on such idle frivolity.
And the theatre is not necessarily much better. And as for gambling, drinking, horse-racing, that's not really appropriate either for people from the stricter non-conformist traditions like Quakerism. So what can you do?
Well, one thing you can do study the natural world. It's a form of what was called rational recreation. So it's recreation, but it's respectable and rational recreation...
Public spectacle... what else do you do as a kind of leisure activity... you don't have football matches to go to. You go to hangings, you go to races and celebrity funerals... it's a big civic event"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Garibaldi and the Risorgimento - "Latin America... Democracy is taken for granted while everybody everywhere else in the world except the United States and Switzerland, democracy was a bad word. Was up to the 1870s was just unacceptable, like Communism and Bolshevism for a later generation"
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Should the West have intervened? - "We tried intervening and occupying in Iraq, and that didn't work. We tried intervening and not occupying in Libya, and that did not work. We tried not intervening and not occupying in Syria, and that did not work either. And that crude analysis is almost always followed by a shrug of the shoulders"
British MPs bear some blame for Aleppo tragedy, says George Osborne - "“Let’s be clear now: if you do not shape the world, you will be shaped by it. We are beginning to see the price of not intervening,” Osborne said... The inescapable reality, Johnson said, was that “we as a House of Commons, we as a country, we vacated that space into which Russia stepped, beginning its own bombing campaign on behalf of Assad”... “I think we are deceiving ourselves in this parliament if we believe that we have no responsibility for what has happened in Syria. The tragedy in Aleppo did not come out of a vacuum; it was created by a vacuum, a vacuum of western leadership, of American leadership, British leadership”... The Labour MP John Woodcock, a long-term advocate of intervention, said: “We’ve said ‘Never again’ so many times, and we mean it when we say it, but then, a few months, a few years later, it comes to nothing.”
Scribie Transcription Service | Free Podcast Transcription - "At Scribie.com, our big vision is that eventually all audio/video content created by man will be available as text and the knowledge capital therein will be unlocked for the greater good of humankind. To further this vision we are offering our transcription service free of charge to podcasters. The files will be transcribed whenever we are able to schedule it in and we will send you the transcripts once it's complete. We will also post the audio and transcript on our blog."
Contact Us - McDonald's® - "We do not condone the use of offensive / inappropriate language and we reserve the right not to respond to correspondences that contain vulgarities or derogatory content.
[Checkbox] I agree to McDonald's Restaurants Pte Ltd Terms of engagement."
Singapore: Troop carriers held in Hong Kong should be freed - "Professor Simon Chesterman, dean of law at the National University of Singapore, said sovereign immunity should apply in this case. "Given China's strong position on sovereign immunity, which it has invoked in other jurisdictions for its own protection, it would be surprising if this matter is not resolved - eventually," he said."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, What does Sir Ivan Rogers' resignation mean for Brexit? - "He said... Don't be afraid to speak truth unto power. Well, the word truth is quite an interesting word. I would say actually the word should've been: the opinion unto power. Because I've had many times in the department where I've had civil servants sit in front of me telling me adamantly that some things can or cannot be done, and you look at that and you argue back and debate about it, think about it and then you come back and say there are different ways to do things and I don't agree with that and I'm going to do this. Ministers have to make those decisions. That's what they're there for"
Alibaba CEO Jack Ma meets with Trump, pledges to create 1 million US jobs - "The meeting comes just a few weeks after Trump met with another Asian technology powerhouse, Masayoshi Son the CEO of SoftBank. At that meeting, Trump took credit for a previously announced investment by a fund run by Son and said that the fund would help to create 50,000 jobs."
Jamshid Piruz who beheaded Dutch woman is allowed into Britain unchallenged - "A convicted murderer from Holland was able to walk through Britain’s porous borders without any checks and went on to attack two police officers with a claw-hammer... Court documents in Holland said he was ‘inspired by Taliban movies in which beheadings were seen’... ‘This offence was committed at a time of stress for my client. He was in a foreign country. He seems to have been vulnerable. He seems to have been hallucinating. ‘He was very confused by the vehicles driving on a different side of the road than he was used to’... it is not enough for an EU citizen to have a serious criminal conviction – if it is some time in the past, the UK may fall foul of Brussels directives if they refuse to allow that person into the country."
The Tao of bao: a randomised controlled trial examining the effect of steamed bun consumption on night-call inpatient course and mortality. - "Medical superstitions remain prevalent in today's stressful and technology driven healthcare environment. These irrational beliefs commonly involve night calls, which are periods of volatile workload. In Singapore and Hong Kong, it is commonly held that consumption of steamed buns ("bao") by on-call physicians is associated with increased patient admissions and mortality, due to a homonymous interpretation of the word "bao" in dialect... The consumption of steamed buns ("bao") has no effect on inpatient admissions, mortality, or sleep duration on call."
Take a bao if you are not superstitious. - "RESULTS: Sixty-eight doctors, nurses and medical students responded to our survey. Only 11 admitted to being superstitious, yet 31 believed in the ill-fortune associated with eating bao or meat dumplings, 6 in the nefarious powers of black (5) or red (1) outfits on call, and 14 believed that bathing (6 insisting on the powers of the seven-flower bath) prior to the onset of a call portended good fortune, in terms of busy-ness of a call. Twenty-four believed in "black clouds", i.e. people who attracted bad luck whilst on call, and 32 refused to mouth the words "having a good call" until the day after the event. We discovered 2 hitherto undescribed and undiscovered superstitions, namely the benefits of eating bread and the need to avoid beef, for the good and ill fortune associated with their ingestion.
DISCUSSION: Superstitious practices are alive and well in modern-day Singapore, the practice not necessarily being restricted to the poorly-educated or foolish."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Young to inherit more but in less equal amounts - "'Could it be more popular to tax wealthier old people to pay for their own care which they don't currently pay for often, rather than inheritance tax which is somehow seen by people as immoral'...
'The problem with inheritance tax is the perverse incenstives... it encourages people to spend more rather than to save and invest and to put money in places that can actually value the rest of society as well as their own family'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Joe Lynam - "It's often said you come away from CES with problems you never knew you had. Like how well you're brushing your hair"
The Aberfan disaster and women who made history | Podcast | History Extra - "Barbara Castle was my favourite MP ever... always very funny, always absolutely full of opinions and she was one who said to me one day: oh you know, Jenni, I think you young feminists go a bit far. I don't care, y'know, if they call me the chair or the chairman or the chairwoman or the chairperson, as long as I'm in the chair...
Margaret Thatcher was the most frightening interviewee I've ever encountered because I think it was her great delight to catch journalists out with being slightly loose with the facts. It would delight her to be able to tear you limb from limb so I've never been so well-researched as when I went to interview her"
Meryl Streep said nothing when... - "Meryl Streep said nothing when Obama's Justice Department was targeting reporters and intercepting their communications; she said nothing when Obama's Justice Department was arming Mexican drug lords, resulting in murder; she said nothing when Obama's IRS was threatening and intimidating private citizens because of their viewpoints; she said nothing when Obama's NSA was gathering a massive amount of telephonic activity by American citizens; she said nothing when Obama threw Israel over the cliff at the UN; she said nothing when Obama's policies (or lack thereof) contributed to the growth of ISIS and its genocide, rape, slavery, and torture; etc"
Words speak louder than actions
Every month, 20 SIA girls get pregnant - "if we didnt notice, the service sector & hospitality sector have been hiring pinoys & ahtiongs in droves. soon, we can expect to hear foreign accent lingo coming from SIA girls.
singapore airlines new advert tagline “帅哥，你要去吗？”
SQXXX pinoy SIA girl: "excuse me sirrrr, tank you for plying wip singaporrr airrlines, what woot chew like to driing por represh-meant, coppee, tea, or mee?""
Refusing to reverse, 2 women drivers face-off for 2 hours - "Two women drivers who found themselves on opposite sides of a narrow back lane and refused to reverse so the other could pass, found themselves in a two-hour face-off last week. According to a report by The Star Online, the incident took place at approximately 11am on Thursday in a back lane off Jalan Dato Abdul Rahman in Seremban town. A video of the incident, shot by one of the women shows the other driver flashing vulgar signs at her, then exposing her bra and later resorting to staying put in her car as she listened to music on her earphones. The video also shows a male passenger, who was with the other driver, getting out of the car and walking towards the woman listening to her earphones. He is heard saying, “Reverse lah. Reverse lah!” to which he received a middle finger flashed at him in anger by the woman."
McDonald’s Miri outlets remove halal-certified cake sign - "All McDonald’s outlets in Miri have removed notices allowing only halal-certified cakes to be brought into its premises, following the state government’s criticism of the rule. Commenting on the swift action by the fast food chain’s outlets, Michael Tiang, who is political secretary to Sarawak Chief Minister Adenan Satem, said: “Such prompt action by McDonald’s constitutes a wise move as well as a positive response to the strong objections among Sarawak people towards its recent unpopular policy”... "they received a further instruction from their headquarters to take down such notices so as to complement the tolerant spirit in Sarawak,” he said in a statement released yesterday. He urged McDonald’s to dispense with their latest policy as such a move was “not welcomed in the racial and religious harmonious society in Sarawak”. Tiang had previously said consumers were entitled to reject unreasonable requirements, and if necessary, would boycott the establishments. “It is always the Sarawak chief minister’s stand that racial or religious extremism has no place in Sarawak as the state practises a culture of tolerance, moderation and mutual understanding towards all races and religions,” Tiang said."
Looks like East Malaysia is Less Strict about Islam than Singapore
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, John Dalton - "Like most Protestants, non-conformists of all sorts were very committed to studying the works of God for themselves. Not, say, in contrast to the Catholics who allegedly believe everything that the priests tell them. The Protestant tradition is that you investigate God's works for yourself. And the point about this in relation to science: that God's works mean both the written work, the Bible, but also the works of creation. So there's a long standing interest in Protestantism in studying the natural world and seeing that as the work of God, and trying to understand the power and wisdom and benevolence of God through looking at the natural world.
So that's one thing that influenced this general Protestant interest in the natural world. But there's another thing I think specific to the late 18th century, particularly to non-conformists is that: think about what you could do as a leisure activity if you're in the late 18th century. Now, there's no television, there's no radio, there's no cinema. So what're you gonna do? You might read novels... you could do that. But that's fiction and lots of non-conformist traditions would frown on wasting your time on such idle frivolity.
And the theatre is not necessarily much better. And as for gambling, drinking, horse-racing, that's not really appropriate either for people from the stricter non-conformist traditions like Quakerism. So what can you do?
Well, one thing you can do study the natural world. It's a form of what was called rational recreation. So it's recreation, but it's respectable and rational recreation...
Public spectacle... what else do you do as a kind of leisure activity... you don't have football matches to go to. You go to hangings, you go to races and celebrity funerals... it's a big civic event"
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Garibaldi and the Risorgimento - "Latin America... Democracy is taken for granted while everybody everywhere else in the world except the United States and Switzerland, democracy was a bad word. Was up to the 1870s was just unacceptable, like Communism and Bolshevism for a later generation"
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Should the West have intervened? - "We tried intervening and occupying in Iraq, and that didn't work. We tried intervening and not occupying in Libya, and that did not work. We tried not intervening and not occupying in Syria, and that did not work either. And that crude analysis is almost always followed by a shrug of the shoulders"
British MPs bear some blame for Aleppo tragedy, says George Osborne - "“Let’s be clear now: if you do not shape the world, you will be shaped by it. We are beginning to see the price of not intervening,” Osborne said... The inescapable reality, Johnson said, was that “we as a House of Commons, we as a country, we vacated that space into which Russia stepped, beginning its own bombing campaign on behalf of Assad”... “I think we are deceiving ourselves in this parliament if we believe that we have no responsibility for what has happened in Syria. The tragedy in Aleppo did not come out of a vacuum; it was created by a vacuum, a vacuum of western leadership, of American leadership, British leadership”... The Labour MP John Woodcock, a long-term advocate of intervention, said: “We’ve said ‘Never again’ so many times, and we mean it when we say it, but then, a few months, a few years later, it comes to nothing.”
Scribie Transcription Service | Free Podcast Transcription - "At Scribie.com, our big vision is that eventually all audio/video content created by man will be available as text and the knowledge capital therein will be unlocked for the greater good of humankind. To further this vision we are offering our transcription service free of charge to podcasters. The files will be transcribed whenever we are able to schedule it in and we will send you the transcripts once it's complete. We will also post the audio and transcript on our blog."
Contact Us - McDonald's® - "We do not condone the use of offensive / inappropriate language and we reserve the right not to respond to correspondences that contain vulgarities or derogatory content.
[Checkbox] I agree to McDonald's Restaurants Pte Ltd Terms of engagement."
Singapore: Troop carriers held in Hong Kong should be freed - "Professor Simon Chesterman, dean of law at the National University of Singapore, said sovereign immunity should apply in this case. "Given China's strong position on sovereign immunity, which it has invoked in other jurisdictions for its own protection, it would be surprising if this matter is not resolved - eventually," he said."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, What does Sir Ivan Rogers' resignation mean for Brexit? - "He said... Don't be afraid to speak truth unto power. Well, the word truth is quite an interesting word. I would say actually the word should've been: the opinion unto power. Because I've had many times in the department where I've had civil servants sit in front of me telling me adamantly that some things can or cannot be done, and you look at that and you argue back and debate about it, think about it and then you come back and say there are different ways to do things and I don't agree with that and I'm going to do this. Ministers have to make those decisions. That's what they're there for"
Alibaba CEO Jack Ma meets with Trump, pledges to create 1 million US jobs - "The meeting comes just a few weeks after Trump met with another Asian technology powerhouse, Masayoshi Son the CEO of SoftBank. At that meeting, Trump took credit for a previously announced investment by a fund run by Son and said that the fund would help to create 50,000 jobs."
Jamshid Piruz who beheaded Dutch woman is allowed into Britain unchallenged - "A convicted murderer from Holland was able to walk through Britain’s porous borders without any checks and went on to attack two police officers with a claw-hammer... Court documents in Holland said he was ‘inspired by Taliban movies in which beheadings were seen’... ‘This offence was committed at a time of stress for my client. He was in a foreign country. He seems to have been vulnerable. He seems to have been hallucinating. ‘He was very confused by the vehicles driving on a different side of the road than he was used to’... it is not enough for an EU citizen to have a serious criminal conviction – if it is some time in the past, the UK may fall foul of Brussels directives if they refuse to allow that person into the country."
Bad Medicine
BBC Radio 4 - Crossing Continents, Addicted in Suburbia
"After any injury, many Americans expect to be pain-free. The US consumes around 80% of all opiate painkillers produced in the world. But for too many people their dependence on prescription medication has led them to heroin. Addiction is everywhere, even here in the upmarket suburbs of Lorain county west of Cleveland...
In Ohio, we hear many stories of opiates unnecessarily prescribed even after minor dental work. And across the US, the tentacles of the heroin epidemic reach back to the over-prescription of pills that started in the 1990s. Pain became a fifth vital sign."
Bad Medicine, Part 2: (Drug) Trials and Tribulations - Freakonomics Freakonomics
"The majority of new cancer drugs are marginal, that they offer sort of very small gains at tremendous prices, and to give you an example of that, among 71 drugs approved for the solid cancers, the median improvement in overall survival or how long people lived was just 2.1 months. And those drugs routinely cost over $100,000 per year of treatment or course of treatment."
Bad Medicine, Part 3: Death by Diagnosis - Freakonomics Freakonomics
"ANUPAM JENA: Prescription opioid use has gone up about 300-400 percent since the year 2000. America is a world leader in the consumption of painkillers. Here’s what a 2007 report found:
WAILOO: We were consuming about 83 percent of the world’s oxycodone in the United States. And it is not because we had 83 percent of the world’s pain. It’s because we are a consumer society that believes in the power of the magic pill...
In the late 1980s and early 90s, there was a push to mandate the recognition and treatment of pain. This culminated in the promotion of pain as the fifth vital sign, along with temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and respiratory rate. Which made pain the only vital sign that is determined not by objective measurement, but by the patient’s own assessment...
One result of this prescription onslaught? It is believed to have contributed to a recent uptick in mortality rates. Anupam Jena is a physician and a healthcare economist at Harvard.
JENA: Mortality rates in the U.S. have risen for the first time in 10 years. Which is striking, considering that mortality rates have been falling for at least 100 years...
WAILOO: Yeah, so pain management was really emerging as a recognizable and legitimate area of medical practice and care in the 1960s, early 1970s, with the development of multidisciplinary pain centers... There was a general recognition that you needed more than just drugs to deal with people in chronic pain. You needed social workers, you needed surgeons, you needed psychologists, you needed a wide range of others as well as people with pharmacological expertise. But those multidisciplinary pain centers were really expensive.
WAILOO: And so, you know one of the economic trends, since the 1980s, with the rise of cost containment, is to sort of see drugs as the cheapest and the fastest solution to our problem.
This coincided with a big shift in how drugs are marketed to the public...
“Physicians who do not comply with patient requests,” the authors wrote, “may be the recipients of poor ratings on patient satisfaction scores, possibly resulting in emotional, financial, and professional penalties.” So imagine this. You are a doctor and your patient asks, maybe by name, for a prescription pain-killer. You may think the patient doesn’t really need it; you may, in fact, be worried they’ll abuse it, maybe even sell it. But if that consumer has the ability to punish you professionally … well, you might just write the scrip...
The third-leading cause of death in the U.S., after heart disease and cancer, was … medical error. I’m going to say that again: the third-leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 10 percent of deaths annually, is medical error...
If you happen to be treated by a doctor who is 10 years or 15 years out of residency, your mortality within thirty days of being hospitalized is higher... We don’t see this effect among high-volume doctors — doctors who are seeing a lot of patients. So what that suggests that if you are an older doctor who is seeing a lot of patients, you are protected from this adverse effect
The Cost of Satisfaction
"Higher patient satisfaction was associated with less emergency department use but with greater inpatient use, higher overall health care and prescription drug expenditures, and increased mortality."
"After any injury, many Americans expect to be pain-free. The US consumes around 80% of all opiate painkillers produced in the world. But for too many people their dependence on prescription medication has led them to heroin. Addiction is everywhere, even here in the upmarket suburbs of Lorain county west of Cleveland...
In Ohio, we hear many stories of opiates unnecessarily prescribed even after minor dental work. And across the US, the tentacles of the heroin epidemic reach back to the over-prescription of pills that started in the 1990s. Pain became a fifth vital sign."
Bad Medicine, Part 2: (Drug) Trials and Tribulations - Freakonomics Freakonomics
"The majority of new cancer drugs are marginal, that they offer sort of very small gains at tremendous prices, and to give you an example of that, among 71 drugs approved for the solid cancers, the median improvement in overall survival or how long people lived was just 2.1 months. And those drugs routinely cost over $100,000 per year of treatment or course of treatment."
Bad Medicine, Part 3: Death by Diagnosis - Freakonomics Freakonomics
"ANUPAM JENA: Prescription opioid use has gone up about 300-400 percent since the year 2000. America is a world leader in the consumption of painkillers. Here’s what a 2007 report found:
WAILOO: We were consuming about 83 percent of the world’s oxycodone in the United States. And it is not because we had 83 percent of the world’s pain. It’s because we are a consumer society that believes in the power of the magic pill...
In the late 1980s and early 90s, there was a push to mandate the recognition and treatment of pain. This culminated in the promotion of pain as the fifth vital sign, along with temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and respiratory rate. Which made pain the only vital sign that is determined not by objective measurement, but by the patient’s own assessment...
One result of this prescription onslaught? It is believed to have contributed to a recent uptick in mortality rates. Anupam Jena is a physician and a healthcare economist at Harvard.
JENA: Mortality rates in the U.S. have risen for the first time in 10 years. Which is striking, considering that mortality rates have been falling for at least 100 years...
WAILOO: Yeah, so pain management was really emerging as a recognizable and legitimate area of medical practice and care in the 1960s, early 1970s, with the development of multidisciplinary pain centers... There was a general recognition that you needed more than just drugs to deal with people in chronic pain. You needed social workers, you needed surgeons, you needed psychologists, you needed a wide range of others as well as people with pharmacological expertise. But those multidisciplinary pain centers were really expensive.
WAILOO: And so, you know one of the economic trends, since the 1980s, with the rise of cost containment, is to sort of see drugs as the cheapest and the fastest solution to our problem.
This coincided with a big shift in how drugs are marketed to the public...
“Physicians who do not comply with patient requests,” the authors wrote, “may be the recipients of poor ratings on patient satisfaction scores, possibly resulting in emotional, financial, and professional penalties.” So imagine this. You are a doctor and your patient asks, maybe by name, for a prescription pain-killer. You may think the patient doesn’t really need it; you may, in fact, be worried they’ll abuse it, maybe even sell it. But if that consumer has the ability to punish you professionally … well, you might just write the scrip...
The third-leading cause of death in the U.S., after heart disease and cancer, was … medical error. I’m going to say that again: the third-leading cause of death in the U.S., accounting for 10 percent of deaths annually, is medical error...
If you happen to be treated by a doctor who is 10 years or 15 years out of residency, your mortality within thirty days of being hospitalized is higher... We don’t see this effect among high-volume doctors — doctors who are seeing a lot of patients. So what that suggests that if you are an older doctor who is seeing a lot of patients, you are protected from this adverse effect
The Cost of Satisfaction
"Higher patient satisfaction was associated with less emergency department use but with greater inpatient use, higher overall health care and prescription drug expenditures, and increased mortality."
Links - 23rd February 2017 (1)
Investing in the ‘little things’ for the benefit of Singaporeans - "quite often, policy misunderstandings were intertwined with cynicism — even lack of trust — about the Government and its intentions. Our ambassadors would excitedly tell a pioneer citizen about his annual Medisave top-ups and show him how this would help to offset his MediShield Life premiums, only for him to reply: “Zheng hu (the Government) give me money, zheng hu take it back.” In one heartbreaking case, ambassadors told a wheelchair-bound senior about the Disability Assistance Scheme, which would give him $100 every month. They filled in his application form, made an appointment with a doctor for him, and left him a postage-paid envelope to submit the form in. Six months later, they visited him again, only to find that he had not submitted his form. Why? Because his friends had told him there was no way that the Government would “give out money for free”. That piece of misplaced coffee-shop chatter cost the senior $600 in cash benefits."
Scientist Dr David Goodall, 102, wins the right to keep job at Perth university - "A 102-year-old scientist has won his battle to continue his research on university campus after initially being kicked off amid concerns he was a safety risk."
Interesting Facts about Chinese Relationships, Marriages - "Generally, Chinese single men put most of their energy into work while women tend to arrange an enjoyable single life for themselves. To some extent, this has been an outcome of the popular idea that successful men and beautiful women are the most favored spouses... While gender equality has been widely supported in the country, Chinese women still prefer husbands who can earn two times their level or even more, so the men can be the major breadwinners in the family. In contrast, men prefer wives with comparative incomes."
Project Fear Brexit predictions were 'flawed and partisan', new study says
Feminists Defend Man Who Harassed Ivanka Trump on JetBlue Flight - "Progressives have a habit of shrieking about “harassment” any time one of their own is met with criticism. They define any sort of disagreement as abuse, but have no problem lobbing their own attacks at anyone whose views are not in alignment with their own. And when a man does it, it’s called “mansplaining.”"
How Pope Francis Became the Leader of the Global Left - WSJ
14 questioned over Christmas tree adorned with word "Allah" in Indonesia - "the chairman of Jambi's Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) Adri Hasan slammed the hotel for the incident, which he claimed was blasphemous. "We want this case to be thoroughly investigated to prevent restlessness among Muslims," he said."
Maybe they will censor bibles next
Drexel Professor: 'Abolish The White Race' - "Cicariello-Maher, a white man who specializes in race and racism among other topics, has been the subject of criticism from media outlets and social media users after he tweeted on Saturday, “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” He subsequently deleted the tweet and brushed it off as a joke, saying that “White isn’t a race”... Ciccariello-Maher said that the massacre of whites during the Haitian Revolution was a “good thing.” During the Haitian massacre in 1804 as many as 4,000 whites were killed."
Stallion Imagery Too Sexist For Kentucky School - "Frederick Douglass High School, named in honor of the famed civil rights leader who was also a male, had intended to use a graphic of a stallion as the school’s mascot because of the community’s rich horse-breeding heritage. But Cahill’s online petition, that only elicited a relative handful of respondents, has killed the idea. Some of the 214 people who responded to the petition to stop the stallion found the imagery “inappropriate and sexist.”"
Preserving a unique slice of Singapore's rural life - "the agricultural sector, though small, plays a strategic role in the nation's food security, supplying some 10 per cent of its food."
How ‘Rogue One’ Brought Back Familiar Faces - NYTimes.com - "“When Peter Cushing makes an ‘aah’ sound, he doesn’t move his upper lip. He only opens his jaw about halfway, and makes this square shape with his lower lip, that exposes his lower teeth.” Before nuances like this were accounted for, Mr. Knoll said their creation “looked like maybe a relative of Peter Cushing and not him exactly.”"
How The Fuck High Was This New Yorker Guy When He Wrote This Star Wars Take? - "Listen. I am not going to try to unpack and critique the bonkers Rogue One review published by the New Yorker’s Richard Brody today. I do not even know where to begin. I am just going to blockquote some portions down below this paragraph, and I invite you to join me in making halting, inarticulate, baffled vocalizations at them."
Why 'Rogue One' Is Superior to 'The Force Awakens' - "Rogue One contains more Star Wars head nods, hat tips and hidden treasures than an eight-year-old's toy collection and a San Diego Comic-Con exhibit hall combined. So why is it, then, that the film somehow feels fresher than The Force Awakens' nostalgia?... While The Force Awakens contented itself with putting a contemporary gloss on tried-and-true formulae, Rogue One took a shot at something new. The former used nostalgia as a currency and fan service as a cudgel; this semi-peripheral addition to the canon uses both of these elements for riffing and a big-picture–narrative spackle, but also as grist for making a statement"
Rogue One’s CGI Princess Leia: The sands of time are so cruel you can't even do motion capture for your younger self - "People have aged so much that you can’t even get them to do the motion capture. As you get older you’re not the same, your whole body language is different"
'Rogue One' director based battle scenes on real war photos
Admit it: 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' stinks -- and here's why - "Sitting in the theater at "Avatar," I felt like I was being pounded into submission by a giant hedge fund. Watching "The Force Awakens," I felt as though I was being shown a trailer for the next four movies in the series. Except that trailers aren't normally two hours long and you don't have to pay $12.50 to see them. "The Force Awakens" will reinforce even more strongly a blockbuster, sequel-oriented style of moviemaking and marketing that has sapped Hollywood of its creative energies. Why be creative when that will merely interfere with merchandising, and when recycling is more dependably profitable?... One can envision Hollywood eventually turning out only two products: "Star Wars" movies and James Bond movies, each periodically "rebooted" for a new generation of customers by casting the latest new young stars in new costumes facing the same old perils and uttering the same old quips, with every other vestige of creative originality relegated to the void and forgotten."
Android Is Different, In A Good Way - "even though the Samsung Galaxy SIII got frozen at Android 4.3, it still retained the ability to see nearly all of its basic functionality updated up to current 2016 standards. Did it lose something? Yes, it lost some technical improvements within Android 4.4.2, 5.0 and 6.0 which improved smoothness and battery saving (though new versions then eat that away). However, most of the more important new version features which remain within the core Android OS deal mostly with support for new hardware. Since the hardware doesn't change on an old device, most of those improvements are meaningless... This trend towards making Android more modular and migrating more functionality away from the core OS remains in force. This trend makes the actual updating of the core OS less and less important... Many iOS users will be familiar with the experience. When updating iOS in their older devices, the new version bogs down their old device to near-unusable status... The thesis this article seeks to advance is that the OS update landscape is not as clear-cut as most people would have it. While a lot more Android devices will be stuck in earlier OS versions than Apple devices, when it comes to the actual core functionality Android is structured in such a way that even older OS versions have access to the latest core apps and most of the latest OS functionality. As a result, most of Android's core app functionality will actually be updated more often than in iOS"
Intrasexual Competition Shapes Men’s Anti-Utilitarian Moral Decisions - "Killing someone in order to save several lives seems more morally acceptable to men than to women. We suggest that this greater approbation of utilitarian killings may reflect gender differences in the tolerance to inflicting physical harm, which are partly the product of sexual selection. Based on this account, we predicted that men may be less utilitarian than women in other conditions. In four studies, we show that men are more likely than women to make the anti-utilitarian (hypothetical) choice of causing three same sex deaths to save one opposite sex life; and that this choice is more likely when there are fewer potential sexual partners, more likely for heterosexual men and less likely if the female character to be saved no longer has reproductive value."
The strange history and ugly core of Donald Trump Jr.'s Skittles tweet, explained - "The online “poisoned candy” metaphor started with feminists pushing back against the complaint that “not all men” are misogynists. Anti-feminists shot back, substituting Muslims for men in the analogy to demonstrate how offensive it would otherwise be. Then — truly missing the point — conservatives adopted it over the past year as a genuine argument that any migration from Syria is too big a risk... Ben Grelle, who turned the tweet into an image that went viral, argued that he only wanted to justify why marginalized people should fear the powerful majority, not the other way around: “What harm befalls an oppressive group if people are cautious of them?”"
Vox seems to think that "the point" is that men are evil
Italy told to brace itself for 'September assault' after arrival of 150,000 migrants - worldnews - "This is idiotic. The Mediterranean migrants are "rescued" about 12 km off the Libyan coast. The governments and NGOs patrolling just outside Libyan waters aren't rescuing anyone. All they're doing is providing a free taxi service for illegal immigrants. They might as well just charter free, ongoing flights between Italy and every African capital. Come one, come all.
FFS. Is it any wonder that the numbers keep growing?"
Google and Mozilla Remove Extension That Was Caught Selling User Data - "Ironically, the extension's purpose is to provide information on the reputation of websites that users are trying to access, if they're safe for kids, contain spam, are trustworthy, or don't respect user privacy."
Must-see artworks at National Gallery Singapore - "Commissioned by the Japanese army, Meeting of Generals Yamashita and Percival ( 1942 ) by Miyamoto Saburo immortalizes probably one of the darkest moments in the British history. In 1942, the Japanese government sent Miyamoto Saburo to Singapore to create a painting based on the surrender incident. But he did not witness the actual surrender; he came after it was done,” said Low. Therefore, he made sketches of the room where the event took place. He also had the chance to make detailed sketches of Yamashita and Percival. However, some elements of the painting are fictitious. “We know that the British were carrying a white flag and a British flag, but they were not allowed to bring those flags into the room where the ceremony took place,” said Low. However, the flags were later inserted into the painting at the request of Japanese military authorities. In addition to the actual event, the painting became proof that Japanese art is equally as impressive as Western works. “One idea that we want to bring forward in the exhibition is [that] painting is a subjective expression for artistic activity. So we have to understand how the arts were produced, [by] whom they were produced, and why they were produced,” Low explained.
‘Clinton quite effective at discrediting herself, doesn’t need Putin’s help’ - ex CIA analyst - "The report lacks any factual evidence, because the intelligence services apparently don’t have any, Larry Johnson believes"
Trump Uses Twitter as Strategic Weapon - "they do garner enormous media coverage and allow Trump to drive his message home... Alex Conant, former adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's Republican presidential campaign in 2016, told Politico, "The challenge is by being spontaneous, it's hard to build an echo chamber of surrogates and supporters to consistently drive home the message. The opportunity is that Trump is able to connect with the American people in an authentic and real way that other recent presidents haven't been able to. When he tweets, people understand it's actually coming from him." Kevin Madden, a GOP strategist and former adviser to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, told Politico, "Trump understands one important dynamic: In a world where there is a wealth of information, there is always a poverty of attention, and he has this ability to generate four or five story lines a day. In the face of that, how can his opponents break through on even one of them? He is always in control.""
What's It All About, Shakespeare? - "The very thing I love about Shakespeare's girls is the very thing that means they're not really representative of the rest of their gender...
Shakespeare's women all, to my mind, have this in common. They are stronger than their sex. Or, at the very least, stronger than their sex is 'expected' to be. And, in many ways, that's to be applauded. Unlike some of Shakespeare's contemporaries, he didn't write insipid, weak female roles. Yet, unfortunately, this means he's not telling 'real' women's stories, either. These are girls who are breaking men's rules in order to play in a man's world. But what about all of those women who couldn't do that? Well, the fact is, their stories wouldn't have been anywhere near as entertaining!"
Similarly, the fetishisation of strong female characters makes them unrepresentative
Queering the Gaze: Calgary Hockey Breasts, Dynamics of Desire, and Colonial Hauntings - "This paper compares two hockey-related breast-flashing events that occurred in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The first was performed by Calgary Flames fans, the ‘Flamesgirls’, in the 2004 NHL Stanley Cup final, and the second flashing event occurred when members and fans of the Booby Orr hockey team participated in lifting their shirts and jerseys at a lesbian hockey tournament at the 2007 Outgames/Western Cup held in Calgary. We deploy an analysis of visual psychic economies to highlight psychoanalytic framings of masculinized and feminized subject positions in both heteronormative and lesbigay-coded sporting spaces. We suggest there is a queer twist to the Booby Orr flashing context, which we read as disruptive and potentially resistive. The paper ends by turning to Avery Gordon’s (1997) Ghostly Matters, to consider how even in its queer transgression, the Booby Orr flashing scene is simultaneously haunted and saturated by the absent presence of colonial technologies of visuality and sexual violence. It is argued that in this case, openings for transgressive gender dynamics might be imaginable – even as those logics themselves are disciplined and perhaps made possible through racialized colonial framings of appropriate desire."
Blair babes 'have failed' women in politics - Telegraph - "BLAIR'S babes, the record number of Labour women MPs elected in 1997, have put back the cause of women in politics by concentrating on their own working conditions since entering Parliament, says Gillian Shephard, the former Tory minister... She had "high hopes" that they would transform Parliament and make a big difference to government. But the new women were "whipped into line" and became mostly compliant, hopeful of preferment... by concentrating on their working conditions, they may have deterred other aspiring women from becoming politicians. In the book, she singles out Tess Kingham (Lab, Gloucester), who said she would not be standing at the next election because of late night sittings, and Julia Drown (Lab, Swindon S), who led an unsuccessful campaign for mothers to breast-feed anywhere in the House. Mrs Shephard quotes approvingly a reported comment from Betty Boothroyd, the Speaker, that she would have more sympathy when she saw check-out girls at Tesco breast-feeding their babies while doing their job. Criticism could be levelled at some of the "sillier aspects" of conditions at the Commons but all-night sittings and the "rough and tumble" of the place were not a secret. There could hardly be a workplace whose conditions were better known in advance. "If such conditions are unacceptable, and they may be to parents of young children, then it is better to wait to get elected until it is an easier proposition. Other professional women - lawyers, accountants and teachers - do not demand the right to breast-feed while in court, with clients or in front of a class. I imagine there would be uproar if they did. Why, then, do women MPs choose to give their own profession a bad name by demanding privileges not available to other women?""
Female MPs are useless not victims of sexism: Ann Widdecombe lashes out at the Blair Babes with a 'sense of grievance' - "Female MPs who complain about how macho politics are not the victims of sexism but simply ‘useless’, Ann Widdecombe has claimed. The outspoken former Tory minister dismissed the idea that Westminster was biased against women, and insisted both sexes were ‘roughed up’ during debates. In remarks likely divide opinion in Parliament, Miss Widdecombe said women must not go into politics with a ‘sense of grievance’. Miss Widdecombe, who was prisons minister in John Major’s last government, insisted those women who do choose a career in politics had to prove their commitment, and realise having a family might not be conducive to the rough and tumble of life in Westminster... ‘About sixth months afterwards, one of them came up to me in the corridor and she said to me: “Ann, isn’t it horrible how the men are so rude to us?” ‘And I said “yes, and isn’t it horrible how they are so rude to each other?” And she hadn’t thought of that."
Scientist Dr David Goodall, 102, wins the right to keep job at Perth university - "A 102-year-old scientist has won his battle to continue his research on university campus after initially being kicked off amid concerns he was a safety risk."
Interesting Facts about Chinese Relationships, Marriages - "Generally, Chinese single men put most of their energy into work while women tend to arrange an enjoyable single life for themselves. To some extent, this has been an outcome of the popular idea that successful men and beautiful women are the most favored spouses... While gender equality has been widely supported in the country, Chinese women still prefer husbands who can earn two times their level or even more, so the men can be the major breadwinners in the family. In contrast, men prefer wives with comparative incomes."
Project Fear Brexit predictions were 'flawed and partisan', new study says
Feminists Defend Man Who Harassed Ivanka Trump on JetBlue Flight - "Progressives have a habit of shrieking about “harassment” any time one of their own is met with criticism. They define any sort of disagreement as abuse, but have no problem lobbing their own attacks at anyone whose views are not in alignment with their own. And when a man does it, it’s called “mansplaining.”"
How Pope Francis Became the Leader of the Global Left - WSJ
14 questioned over Christmas tree adorned with word "Allah" in Indonesia - "the chairman of Jambi's Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) Adri Hasan slammed the hotel for the incident, which he claimed was blasphemous. "We want this case to be thoroughly investigated to prevent restlessness among Muslims," he said."
Maybe they will censor bibles next
Drexel Professor: 'Abolish The White Race' - "Cicariello-Maher, a white man who specializes in race and racism among other topics, has been the subject of criticism from media outlets and social media users after he tweeted on Saturday, “All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide.” He subsequently deleted the tweet and brushed it off as a joke, saying that “White isn’t a race”... Ciccariello-Maher said that the massacre of whites during the Haitian Revolution was a “good thing.” During the Haitian massacre in 1804 as many as 4,000 whites were killed."
Stallion Imagery Too Sexist For Kentucky School - "Frederick Douglass High School, named in honor of the famed civil rights leader who was also a male, had intended to use a graphic of a stallion as the school’s mascot because of the community’s rich horse-breeding heritage. But Cahill’s online petition, that only elicited a relative handful of respondents, has killed the idea. Some of the 214 people who responded to the petition to stop the stallion found the imagery “inappropriate and sexist.”"
Preserving a unique slice of Singapore's rural life - "the agricultural sector, though small, plays a strategic role in the nation's food security, supplying some 10 per cent of its food."
How ‘Rogue One’ Brought Back Familiar Faces - NYTimes.com - "“When Peter Cushing makes an ‘aah’ sound, he doesn’t move his upper lip. He only opens his jaw about halfway, and makes this square shape with his lower lip, that exposes his lower teeth.” Before nuances like this were accounted for, Mr. Knoll said their creation “looked like maybe a relative of Peter Cushing and not him exactly.”"
How The Fuck High Was This New Yorker Guy When He Wrote This Star Wars Take? - "Listen. I am not going to try to unpack and critique the bonkers Rogue One review published by the New Yorker’s Richard Brody today. I do not even know where to begin. I am just going to blockquote some portions down below this paragraph, and I invite you to join me in making halting, inarticulate, baffled vocalizations at them."
Why 'Rogue One' Is Superior to 'The Force Awakens' - "Rogue One contains more Star Wars head nods, hat tips and hidden treasures than an eight-year-old's toy collection and a San Diego Comic-Con exhibit hall combined. So why is it, then, that the film somehow feels fresher than The Force Awakens' nostalgia?... While The Force Awakens contented itself with putting a contemporary gloss on tried-and-true formulae, Rogue One took a shot at something new. The former used nostalgia as a currency and fan service as a cudgel; this semi-peripheral addition to the canon uses both of these elements for riffing and a big-picture–narrative spackle, but also as grist for making a statement"
Rogue One’s CGI Princess Leia: The sands of time are so cruel you can't even do motion capture for your younger self - "People have aged so much that you can’t even get them to do the motion capture. As you get older you’re not the same, your whole body language is different"
'Rogue One' director based battle scenes on real war photos
Admit it: 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' stinks -- and here's why - "Sitting in the theater at "Avatar," I felt like I was being pounded into submission by a giant hedge fund. Watching "The Force Awakens," I felt as though I was being shown a trailer for the next four movies in the series. Except that trailers aren't normally two hours long and you don't have to pay $12.50 to see them. "The Force Awakens" will reinforce even more strongly a blockbuster, sequel-oriented style of moviemaking and marketing that has sapped Hollywood of its creative energies. Why be creative when that will merely interfere with merchandising, and when recycling is more dependably profitable?... One can envision Hollywood eventually turning out only two products: "Star Wars" movies and James Bond movies, each periodically "rebooted" for a new generation of customers by casting the latest new young stars in new costumes facing the same old perils and uttering the same old quips, with every other vestige of creative originality relegated to the void and forgotten."
Android Is Different, In A Good Way - "even though the Samsung Galaxy SIII got frozen at Android 4.3, it still retained the ability to see nearly all of its basic functionality updated up to current 2016 standards. Did it lose something? Yes, it lost some technical improvements within Android 4.4.2, 5.0 and 6.0 which improved smoothness and battery saving (though new versions then eat that away). However, most of the more important new version features which remain within the core Android OS deal mostly with support for new hardware. Since the hardware doesn't change on an old device, most of those improvements are meaningless... This trend towards making Android more modular and migrating more functionality away from the core OS remains in force. This trend makes the actual updating of the core OS less and less important... Many iOS users will be familiar with the experience. When updating iOS in their older devices, the new version bogs down their old device to near-unusable status... The thesis this article seeks to advance is that the OS update landscape is not as clear-cut as most people would have it. While a lot more Android devices will be stuck in earlier OS versions than Apple devices, when it comes to the actual core functionality Android is structured in such a way that even older OS versions have access to the latest core apps and most of the latest OS functionality. As a result, most of Android's core app functionality will actually be updated more often than in iOS"
Intrasexual Competition Shapes Men’s Anti-Utilitarian Moral Decisions - "Killing someone in order to save several lives seems more morally acceptable to men than to women. We suggest that this greater approbation of utilitarian killings may reflect gender differences in the tolerance to inflicting physical harm, which are partly the product of sexual selection. Based on this account, we predicted that men may be less utilitarian than women in other conditions. In four studies, we show that men are more likely than women to make the anti-utilitarian (hypothetical) choice of causing three same sex deaths to save one opposite sex life; and that this choice is more likely when there are fewer potential sexual partners, more likely for heterosexual men and less likely if the female character to be saved no longer has reproductive value."
The strange history and ugly core of Donald Trump Jr.'s Skittles tweet, explained - "The online “poisoned candy” metaphor started with feminists pushing back against the complaint that “not all men” are misogynists. Anti-feminists shot back, substituting Muslims for men in the analogy to demonstrate how offensive it would otherwise be. Then — truly missing the point — conservatives adopted it over the past year as a genuine argument that any migration from Syria is too big a risk... Ben Grelle, who turned the tweet into an image that went viral, argued that he only wanted to justify why marginalized people should fear the powerful majority, not the other way around: “What harm befalls an oppressive group if people are cautious of them?”"
Vox seems to think that "the point" is that men are evil
Italy told to brace itself for 'September assault' after arrival of 150,000 migrants - worldnews - "This is idiotic. The Mediterranean migrants are "rescued" about 12 km off the Libyan coast. The governments and NGOs patrolling just outside Libyan waters aren't rescuing anyone. All they're doing is providing a free taxi service for illegal immigrants. They might as well just charter free, ongoing flights between Italy and every African capital. Come one, come all.
FFS. Is it any wonder that the numbers keep growing?"
Google and Mozilla Remove Extension That Was Caught Selling User Data - "Ironically, the extension's purpose is to provide information on the reputation of websites that users are trying to access, if they're safe for kids, contain spam, are trustworthy, or don't respect user privacy."
Must-see artworks at National Gallery Singapore - "Commissioned by the Japanese army, Meeting of Generals Yamashita and Percival ( 1942 ) by Miyamoto Saburo immortalizes probably one of the darkest moments in the British history. In 1942, the Japanese government sent Miyamoto Saburo to Singapore to create a painting based on the surrender incident. But he did not witness the actual surrender; he came after it was done,” said Low. Therefore, he made sketches of the room where the event took place. He also had the chance to make detailed sketches of Yamashita and Percival. However, some elements of the painting are fictitious. “We know that the British were carrying a white flag and a British flag, but they were not allowed to bring those flags into the room where the ceremony took place,” said Low. However, the flags were later inserted into the painting at the request of Japanese military authorities. In addition to the actual event, the painting became proof that Japanese art is equally as impressive as Western works. “One idea that we want to bring forward in the exhibition is [that] painting is a subjective expression for artistic activity. So we have to understand how the arts were produced, [by] whom they were produced, and why they were produced,” Low explained.
‘Clinton quite effective at discrediting herself, doesn’t need Putin’s help’ - ex CIA analyst - "The report lacks any factual evidence, because the intelligence services apparently don’t have any, Larry Johnson believes"
Trump Uses Twitter as Strategic Weapon - "they do garner enormous media coverage and allow Trump to drive his message home... Alex Conant, former adviser to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's Republican presidential campaign in 2016, told Politico, "The challenge is by being spontaneous, it's hard to build an echo chamber of surrogates and supporters to consistently drive home the message. The opportunity is that Trump is able to connect with the American people in an authentic and real way that other recent presidents haven't been able to. When he tweets, people understand it's actually coming from him." Kevin Madden, a GOP strategist and former adviser to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney in 2012, told Politico, "Trump understands one important dynamic: In a world where there is a wealth of information, there is always a poverty of attention, and he has this ability to generate four or five story lines a day. In the face of that, how can his opponents break through on even one of them? He is always in control.""
What's It All About, Shakespeare? - "The very thing I love about Shakespeare's girls is the very thing that means they're not really representative of the rest of their gender...
Shakespeare's women all, to my mind, have this in common. They are stronger than their sex. Or, at the very least, stronger than their sex is 'expected' to be. And, in many ways, that's to be applauded. Unlike some of Shakespeare's contemporaries, he didn't write insipid, weak female roles. Yet, unfortunately, this means he's not telling 'real' women's stories, either. These are girls who are breaking men's rules in order to play in a man's world. But what about all of those women who couldn't do that? Well, the fact is, their stories wouldn't have been anywhere near as entertaining!"
Similarly, the fetishisation of strong female characters makes them unrepresentative
Queering the Gaze: Calgary Hockey Breasts, Dynamics of Desire, and Colonial Hauntings - "This paper compares two hockey-related breast-flashing events that occurred in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The first was performed by Calgary Flames fans, the ‘Flamesgirls’, in the 2004 NHL Stanley Cup final, and the second flashing event occurred when members and fans of the Booby Orr hockey team participated in lifting their shirts and jerseys at a lesbian hockey tournament at the 2007 Outgames/Western Cup held in Calgary. We deploy an analysis of visual psychic economies to highlight psychoanalytic framings of masculinized and feminized subject positions in both heteronormative and lesbigay-coded sporting spaces. We suggest there is a queer twist to the Booby Orr flashing context, which we read as disruptive and potentially resistive. The paper ends by turning to Avery Gordon’s (1997) Ghostly Matters, to consider how even in its queer transgression, the Booby Orr flashing scene is simultaneously haunted and saturated by the absent presence of colonial technologies of visuality and sexual violence. It is argued that in this case, openings for transgressive gender dynamics might be imaginable – even as those logics themselves are disciplined and perhaps made possible through racialized colonial framings of appropriate desire."
Blair babes 'have failed' women in politics - Telegraph - "BLAIR'S babes, the record number of Labour women MPs elected in 1997, have put back the cause of women in politics by concentrating on their own working conditions since entering Parliament, says Gillian Shephard, the former Tory minister... She had "high hopes" that they would transform Parliament and make a big difference to government. But the new women were "whipped into line" and became mostly compliant, hopeful of preferment... by concentrating on their working conditions, they may have deterred other aspiring women from becoming politicians. In the book, she singles out Tess Kingham (Lab, Gloucester), who said she would not be standing at the next election because of late night sittings, and Julia Drown (Lab, Swindon S), who led an unsuccessful campaign for mothers to breast-feed anywhere in the House. Mrs Shephard quotes approvingly a reported comment from Betty Boothroyd, the Speaker, that she would have more sympathy when she saw check-out girls at Tesco breast-feeding their babies while doing their job. Criticism could be levelled at some of the "sillier aspects" of conditions at the Commons but all-night sittings and the "rough and tumble" of the place were not a secret. There could hardly be a workplace whose conditions were better known in advance. "If such conditions are unacceptable, and they may be to parents of young children, then it is better to wait to get elected until it is an easier proposition. Other professional women - lawyers, accountants and teachers - do not demand the right to breast-feed while in court, with clients or in front of a class. I imagine there would be uproar if they did. Why, then, do women MPs choose to give their own profession a bad name by demanding privileges not available to other women?""
Female MPs are useless not victims of sexism: Ann Widdecombe lashes out at the Blair Babes with a 'sense of grievance' - "Female MPs who complain about how macho politics are not the victims of sexism but simply ‘useless’, Ann Widdecombe has claimed. The outspoken former Tory minister dismissed the idea that Westminster was biased against women, and insisted both sexes were ‘roughed up’ during debates. In remarks likely divide opinion in Parliament, Miss Widdecombe said women must not go into politics with a ‘sense of grievance’. Miss Widdecombe, who was prisons minister in John Major’s last government, insisted those women who do choose a career in politics had to prove their commitment, and realise having a family might not be conducive to the rough and tumble of life in Westminster... ‘About sixth months afterwards, one of them came up to me in the corridor and she said to me: “Ann, isn’t it horrible how the men are so rude to us?” ‘And I said “yes, and isn’t it horrible how they are so rude to each other?” And she hadn’t thought of that."
The Overblown Harms of Underaged Sex
"University of Georgia social work professor Allie Kilpatrick.. In 1992... published the results of a study based on a thirty-three page questionnaire about childhood sexual experiences, administered to 501 women from a variety of class, racial, and educational backgrounds. Instead of employing the morally and emotionally freighted phrase sexual abuse, she asked specific questions: How old were you, how often, with whom did you have sex? Did you initiate or did the other person? What acts did you engage in ("kiss and hug," "you show genitals," "oral sex by you," etc.)? Was it pleasurable, voluntary, coerced? How did you feel later?
Kilpatrick found that 55 percent of her respondents had had some kind of sex as children (between birth and age fourteen) and 83 percent as adolescents (age fifteen to seventeen), the vast majority of it with boys and men who were not related to them. Of these, 17 percent felt the sex was abusive, and 28 percent said it was harmful. But "the majority of young people who experience some kind of sexual behavior find it pleasurable. They initiated it and didn't feel much guilt or any harmful consequences," she told me. What about age? "My research showed that difference in age made no difference" in the women's memories of feelings during their childhood sexual experiences or in their lasting effects.
Teens often seek out sex with older people, and they do so for understandable reasons: an older person makes them feel sexy and grown up, protected and special; often the sex is better than it would be with a peer who has as little skill as they do. For some teens, a romance with an older person can feel more like salvation than victimization. Wrote Ryan, a teenager who had run away from home to live in a Minnesota commune with his adult lover, "John was the first person in my life who would let me be who I wanted to be. . . . Without John I would have been dead because I would have killed myself." Indeed, it is not uncommon for the child "victim" to consider his or her "abuser" a best friend, a fact that has led to some dicey diagnostic and criminal locutions. William Prendergast, a former prison psychologist and current frequent-flyer "expert" on child abuse, for instance, talks about "consensual rape" and young people's "pseudo-positive" sexual experiences with adults.
Of course, there are gender differences in the experiences of early sex. The law did not invent these. Boys are used to thinking of themselves as desirers and initiators of sex and resilient players who can dust themselves off from a hard knock at love. So among boys, "self-reported negative effects" of sex in childhood are "uncommon," according to psychologists Bruce Rind and Philip Tromovitch's metanalysis of national samples of people who have had such experiences. Girls and women, on the other hand, are far more often the victims of incest and rape than boys are, and gender compounds whatever age-related power imbalances an intergenerational liaison may contain. Phillips found that girls spoke of entering such partnerships willingly and often rationally and of satisfaction with the adult status they borrowed there. Yet they also often "let their guard down with older guys," agreeing not to use a condom, to drop out of school, or cut off ties with friends and families who could have helped them after the relationship was over. Her older informants offered another vantage point from which to view such relationships, often speaking disparagingly of their past older lovers and regretfully of their choices. Phillips pointed out that such bad behavior and twenty-twenty hindsight aren't exclusive to older-younger relationships. A younger lover might have been just as unfaithful and just as likely to leave a young woman with a baby and no help.
The subjects of Sharon Thompson's Going All the Way represented such love affairs in far more positive ways. Just over 10 percent of the four hundred teenage girls she interviewed through the 1980s "told about actively choosing sexual experiences with men or women five or more years older than they." These girls "had no doubt that they could differentiate between abuse, coercion, and consent." They represented themselves as the aggressors, persisters, and abandoners in these relationships, adept at flipping between adult sophistication and childlike flightiness to suit their moods or romantic goals.
Which story is true—freely chosen love or sweet-talked dupery? Both, said Thompson wisely when I asked her. Phillips seemed to agree. "Rather than presuming that adult-teen relationships are really a form of victimization or that they really represent unproblematic, consensual partnerships—rather than maintaining either that willingness means consent or that an age difference means an inherent inability to consent—we need to step back and probe the nuances of adult-teen relationships from the perspectives of young women who participate in them," Phillips wrote. If we are going to educate young women to avoid potentially exploitative relationships, "those strategies must speak to [their] lived realities and the cultural and personal values that they, their families, and their communities hold regarding this issue." Phillips admitted to ambivalence about age-of-consent laws."
--- Harmful to Minors - The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex / Judith Levine
Kilpatrick found that 55 percent of her respondents had had some kind of sex as children (between birth and age fourteen) and 83 percent as adolescents (age fifteen to seventeen), the vast majority of it with boys and men who were not related to them. Of these, 17 percent felt the sex was abusive, and 28 percent said it was harmful. But "the majority of young people who experience some kind of sexual behavior find it pleasurable. They initiated it and didn't feel much guilt or any harmful consequences," she told me. What about age? "My research showed that difference in age made no difference" in the women's memories of feelings during their childhood sexual experiences or in their lasting effects.
Teens often seek out sex with older people, and they do so for understandable reasons: an older person makes them feel sexy and grown up, protected and special; often the sex is better than it would be with a peer who has as little skill as they do. For some teens, a romance with an older person can feel more like salvation than victimization. Wrote Ryan, a teenager who had run away from home to live in a Minnesota commune with his adult lover, "John was the first person in my life who would let me be who I wanted to be. . . . Without John I would have been dead because I would have killed myself." Indeed, it is not uncommon for the child "victim" to consider his or her "abuser" a best friend, a fact that has led to some dicey diagnostic and criminal locutions. William Prendergast, a former prison psychologist and current frequent-flyer "expert" on child abuse, for instance, talks about "consensual rape" and young people's "pseudo-positive" sexual experiences with adults.
Of course, there are gender differences in the experiences of early sex. The law did not invent these. Boys are used to thinking of themselves as desirers and initiators of sex and resilient players who can dust themselves off from a hard knock at love. So among boys, "self-reported negative effects" of sex in childhood are "uncommon," according to psychologists Bruce Rind and Philip Tromovitch's metanalysis of national samples of people who have had such experiences. Girls and women, on the other hand, are far more often the victims of incest and rape than boys are, and gender compounds whatever age-related power imbalances an intergenerational liaison may contain. Phillips found that girls spoke of entering such partnerships willingly and often rationally and of satisfaction with the adult status they borrowed there. Yet they also often "let their guard down with older guys," agreeing not to use a condom, to drop out of school, or cut off ties with friends and families who could have helped them after the relationship was over. Her older informants offered another vantage point from which to view such relationships, often speaking disparagingly of their past older lovers and regretfully of their choices. Phillips pointed out that such bad behavior and twenty-twenty hindsight aren't exclusive to older-younger relationships. A younger lover might have been just as unfaithful and just as likely to leave a young woman with a baby and no help.
The subjects of Sharon Thompson's Going All the Way represented such love affairs in far more positive ways. Just over 10 percent of the four hundred teenage girls she interviewed through the 1980s "told about actively choosing sexual experiences with men or women five or more years older than they." These girls "had no doubt that they could differentiate between abuse, coercion, and consent." They represented themselves as the aggressors, persisters, and abandoners in these relationships, adept at flipping between adult sophistication and childlike flightiness to suit their moods or romantic goals.
Which story is true—freely chosen love or sweet-talked dupery? Both, said Thompson wisely when I asked her. Phillips seemed to agree. "Rather than presuming that adult-teen relationships are really a form of victimization or that they really represent unproblematic, consensual partnerships—rather than maintaining either that willingness means consent or that an age difference means an inherent inability to consent—we need to step back and probe the nuances of adult-teen relationships from the perspectives of young women who participate in them," Phillips wrote. If we are going to educate young women to avoid potentially exploitative relationships, "those strategies must speak to [their] lived realities and the cultural and personal values that they, their families, and their communities hold regarding this issue." Phillips admitted to ambivalence about age-of-consent laws."
--- Harmful to Minors - The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex / Judith Levine
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Links - 22nd February 2017
List of Shark Products
Sharks are the coconuts of the sea - every part of them is useful
Gravity Payments’ $70K minimum salary: CEO Dan Price shares result over a year later - "sales skyrocketed after the announcement, and Gravity Payments continues to take on new clients at a rate it never had before. It reports nearly doubling profits in a year, from $3.5 million in 2014 to $6.5 million in 2015. So Price is re-evaluating the metrics, and still trying to decide what his income should look like. "
Does True Love Exist? A Social Escort Responds. - "if my clients didn’t love their partners despite whatever that is lacking in their relationships, they would’ve left. But they didn’t. Maybe their partners don’t pay attention to them in the bedroom, or they have certain fantasies that they know their partner would never be comfortable with doing. Paying me (and other escorts) is also an admission to the fact that they never wanted to leave their relationship at all. Love, sex and relationships are complex things, and while they do overlap, understanding that they can be separated has allowed me to continue believing in love."
Virologist urges HIV 'bug chasers' not to infect themselves - "A leading scientist has expressed alarm at a trend in the West in which gay men use social networks to seek HIV-carrying sex partners in order to get infected. The "bug chasers" are often motivated by a desire to secure life-long medical care and social welfare benefits. French virologist Francoise Barré-Sinoussi, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for her life-long work in fighting Aids, said in an interview with the Post that she was unhappy to see such abuse of valuable medical resources and warned that the people doing it might not be well informed of all the risks."
Jay Liu's answer to Has political correctness made it impossible to communicate honestly or effectively? - Quora - "People are always quick to point out that political correctness is not a form of censorship because it's not part of the law. The obvious problem is how "censorship" is confined to "state censorship".
Yes, violating the subtle rules of political correctness will usually not land you in jail, but getting your entire career, public image and social standing destroyed is arguably just as bad as a stint in an actual prison. The reality is that political correctness is a far more effective and sophisticated form of censorship and thought policing than anything Goebbels could have come up with. The closest parallel I can think of to modern day America in terms of political correctness is the Cultural Revolution in China... Don't these Red Guards remind you of some other young, energetic people in the US who have tendency to organize and persecute those who hold beliefs other than their own? Oh yeah, the Social Justice Warriors!"
Why salad is so overrated - "Salad vegetables are pitifully low in nutrition. The biggest thing wrong with salads is lettuce, and the biggest thing wrong with lettuce is that it’s a leafy-green waste of resources... Charles Benbrook... and colleague Donald Davis developed a nutrient quality index — a way to rate foods based on how much of 27 nutrients they contain. Four of the five lowest-ranking vegetables (by serving size) are salad ingredients: cucumbers, radishes, iceberg lettuce and celery. (The fifth is eggplant.) Those foods’ nutritional profile can be partly explained by one simple fact: They’re almost all water... The corollary to the nutrition problem is the expense problem. The makings of a green salad — say, a head of lettuce, a cucumber and a bunch of radishes — cost about $3 at my supermarket. For that, I could buy more than two pounds of broccoli, sweet potatoes or just about any frozen vegetable going, any of which would make for a much more nutritious side dish to my roast chicken... Salad fools dieters into making bad choices... Salad has unfortunate repercussions in our food supply. Lettuce has a couple of No. 1 unenviable rankings in the food world. For starters, it’s the top source of food waste, vegetable division, becoming more than 1 billion pounds of uneaten salad every year. But it’s also the chief culprit for foodborne illnesses. According to the Centers for Disease Control, green leafies accounted for 22 percent of all food-borne illnesses from 1998-2008"
Polish nationals less likely than Dutch to claim welfare - "Polish nationals are less likely to claim welfare benefits than the native Dutch, according to new figures from the national statistics office CBS which were released on Thursday. However, other groups of immigrants and refugees are much more likely to be on benefits, the figures show.
For example, the CBS says seven out of 10 Somali nationals and six out of 10 Syrians live on welfare (bijstand), compared with just 3% of the Dutch. Afghans, Eritreans and Iranians are also much more likely to be living on welfare. ‘A high percentage do not speak the language sufficiently and a relatively large percentage are low-skilled or without any relevant education,’ the CBS said."
Trump Supporters Are Prejudiced—and So Are You - "“People with both relatively higher and lower levels of cognitive ability show approximately equal levels of intergroup bias,” write psychologists Mark Brandt of Tilburg University and Jarret Crawford of the College of New Jersey, “but toward different sets of groups”... “people with lower levels of cognitive ability express more prejudice towards ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians.” However, the researchers also found that “people with higher levels of cognitive ability express more prejudice toward Christian fundamentalists, big business, Christians, the Tea Party, and the military.” Overall, “lower levels of cognitive ability are associated with prejudice towards groups perceived as liberal/unconventional, and as having less choice over their group membership,” the researchers write. (You have no say in your ethnicity.) “At the same time, the data also suggest that higher levels of cognitive ability are associated with prejudice towards groups perceived as conservative/conventional, and as having more choice over their group membership.” (No one forces you to become a business executive.) Brandt and Crawford argue that some cognitive processes utilized by less-intelligent people do lead to prejudice, including an inability or unwillingness to see things from another’s perspective; elevated sensitivity to threat; and the need for certainty. But they note that brighter people can come up with “more self-convincing justifications for prejudice.” In other words, we can use our superior minds to convince ourselves that our emotion-based assumptions actually have merit."
BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Year Everything Changed - "Vaclav Klaus is one of Europe's longest serving political leaders. A former Prime Minister and President of the Czech Republic.
'What we really wanted in the moment of the fall of Communism... was freedom, democracy, market economy and... to be again a normal European sovereign and independent state. After 3 centuries of belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. after half a century belonging to the Soviet Empire, we really wanted to be free. Nothing more... Our slogans on the streets in Prague in November 89 were 'Back to Europe'. And I was the first one who very soon started to explain the people here: back to Europe doesn't mean exactly avante [?] into the European Union... we wanted to become a normal European state.'
'That's what you are isn't it?'
'We are not. We are a member of a very specific conglomerate, grouping of countries called the European Union. To speak about independence is a joke. We wanted to be integrated in the EU but not unified. I think that the role of the national government is now rather limited. Most of the decisions come from Brussels, not from Prague here, so this is not independence'"
BBC Radio 4 - Today, 03/07/2014, What books should politicians read? - "The idea of Harold McMillan going into the garden on No 10 Downing Street and reading Jane Austen novels when it all got too much, I've always found very appealing. And I think voters might that quite appealing. I always thought it was PR but actually when you read Harold McMillan's letters, he mentions terrible times when he's Prime Minister over the Middle East and he says my only solace was reading Emma. Thank goodness for that...
Some of those classics we've mentioned, of course they're books we should all read but the thing a lot of them have in common: Emma, Middlemarch, Great Expectations is that they're wonderful studies in what is surely a politician's abiding vice, which is self-deception"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Monday's business with Rob Young - "He believes his life of crime has left him with, I suppose recruitment professionals might call them 'transferable skills'... One of my parole hearings... she said you treat crime like it's a corporate venture. You do a cost-benefit analysis to everything you do. I had to agree. A lot of guys that do that crime at that level - if you put them in running Apple or Microsoft, they would do just as good as a CEO"
DTR Podcast from Tinder & Gimlet Creative - "Mixed Signals" - Product Hunt - "Glasses make a right swipe 12% less likely"
Pornhub's 2016 Year in Review – Pornhub Insights - "Countries like Canada, the United States, Mexico, Australia, Norway and Colombia are all hitting up our ‘lesbian’ category the most. While South America, Russia, and a good portion of Western Europe and Northern Africa are more common frequenters of Pornhub’s ‘anal’ category. The sage color you see represents the higher proportion of views in the ‘Ebony’ category, which is more concentrated in Africa. And the orange that covers most of Asia, shows where the ‘hentai’ category gets the most love. There is still quite a bit of yellow spread throughout the map, which indicates a preference for the ‘teen (18+)’ category."
Isolated Low Temps May Reassure Climate Skeptics - "cold-influenced-denial may be playing out across the U.S., in particular in Appalachia and the South. Because it turns out those areas have had lots of record low temperatures in the last 12 years. And they're also by and large the same parts of the country that have high numbers of global warming skeptics. So researchers have a theory that personal experience with cold snaps could be trumping scientific facts"
The reality of lived experience!
Shoppers who wear pyjamas in Tesco are given a dressing down - "So-called "all-day pyjama syndrome" is widely seen as a growing social and sartorial problem in the UK. Earlier this year a headteacher at a school in Darlington appealed for parents to stop wearing their pyjamas at the school gates after she noticed an increase in the number of parents failing to get dressed for the school run. Some were even wearing pyjamas to school assemblies and meetings, she said."
Can't remember Marina Bay before Marina Bay Sands? This photographer captured it all through the years
Study: Ice Cream For Breakfast Boosts Brain Performance
11 really good reasons why your country should have a monarchy - "monarchical states seem to promote cohesion. A study by Sascha Becker and others shows higher trust and less corruption inside the borders of the old Habsburg empire than among the people who live just outside the empire’s historical borders... Former Bank of England rate-setter Tim Besley wrote a working paper earlier in the year suggesting that “in a country with weak executive constraints, going from a non-hereditary leader to an hereditary leader, increases the annual average economic growth of the country by 1.03 percentage points per year.” That’s a lot!"
The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation - "ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates"
"Racism" is evolved
Automated book-culling software drives librarians to create fake patrons to "check out" endangered titles - "Two employees at the East Lake County Library created a fictional patron called Chuck Finley -- entering fake driver's license and address details into the library system -- and then used the account to check out 2,361 books over nine months in 2016, in order to trick the system into believing that the books they loved were being circulated to the library's patrons, thus rescuing the books from automated purges of low-popularity titles."
Healthcare workers prioritize helping people over information security (disaster ensues) - "In Workarounds to Computer Access in Healthcare Organizations: You Want My Password or a Dead Patient?, security researchers from Penn, Dartmouth and USC conducted an excellent piece of ethnographic research on health workers, shadowing them as they moved through their work environments, blithely ignoring, circumventing and sabotaging the information security measures imposed by their IT departments, because in so doing, they were saving lives... IT's imposition of password rotation schedules meant that no one knew what their passwords were from moment to moment, forcing them to write them down and share them (in some cases, IT might have had this policy set by vendors or regulators/insurers). Aggressive timeouts on terminals meant that clinicians spent an undue amount of time logging in, making it impossible to get their work done."
Elderly Catholic woman has mistakenly been praying every day to Elrond from ‘Lord of the Rings’
High marks for standardized tests - "If an exam effectively gauges a student’s mastery of U.S. history or English grammar, then teaching the test is simply a matter of helping students develop that knowledge. Teachers who feel that a test ignores something essential should commit to fixing the test, not condemning the entire practice of testing."
Japanese company replaces office workers with artificial intelligence
Muslim Groups Are Reportedly Circulating This Illustration of Santa Getting Punched in the Face - "The Anatolia Youth Association’s Istanbul University branch released an illustration of a bearded Muslim punching St. Nick in the face... a similar illustration of Santa being punched was also seen in the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia"
No wonder Santa shot up the Istanbul nightclub
The Reina atrocity shows how deeply Islamic fanaticism has taken hold in Turkey - "The victims of terrorism are called “martyrs” while the names of urban landmarks are changing, slowly, into Martyrdom Hill or Martyrdom Street. Ministers greet police officers, wishing them to sacrifice themselves for the nation. “God willing, you shall be martyrs too,” says the minister of urbanisation, Mehmet Özhaseki. The government is trying to cover its incompetence in both foreign and domestic policy with the language of jingoism and patriotism. Those who question the official line are labelled “betrayers” and “pawns of western powers”. Young people are told that we are a country surrounded by water on three sides and enemies on all four. As paranoia, distrust and fear intensify, the culture of coexistence dissolves... even after the horrific act of cruelty in Reina. Islamist commentators appeared on TV to say: “We are against New Year. We are against drinking alcohol and celebrations. Whoever wants to blow up whatever place may do so.” What is puzzling is how, in a country where anyone who writes anything critical about the government can be instantly sued, and possibly even arrested and put on trial, such religious or nationalist hatemongers rarely have action taken against them... Once we thought Turkey would be a shining role model for the Muslim world; now we are worried that our country may in fact be following some of its worst examples"
Santa Gets Circumcised in Turkey - "Just a day after Christmas, the Islamist whippersnappers took to the streets of Istanbul with an inflatable Santa Claus to protest against Christmas and New Year’s celebrations in Turkey. One of the protesters took a blade to the doll’s genital region and stabbed it multiple times. Prior to the knifing, demonstrators placed empty beer cans and a syringe in front of Santa, supposedly as a warning about the dangers of celebrating Christmas."
Sharks are the coconuts of the sea - every part of them is useful
Gravity Payments’ $70K minimum salary: CEO Dan Price shares result over a year later - "sales skyrocketed after the announcement, and Gravity Payments continues to take on new clients at a rate it never had before. It reports nearly doubling profits in a year, from $3.5 million in 2014 to $6.5 million in 2015. So Price is re-evaluating the metrics, and still trying to decide what his income should look like. "
Does True Love Exist? A Social Escort Responds. - "if my clients didn’t love their partners despite whatever that is lacking in their relationships, they would’ve left. But they didn’t. Maybe their partners don’t pay attention to them in the bedroom, or they have certain fantasies that they know their partner would never be comfortable with doing. Paying me (and other escorts) is also an admission to the fact that they never wanted to leave their relationship at all. Love, sex and relationships are complex things, and while they do overlap, understanding that they can be separated has allowed me to continue believing in love."
Virologist urges HIV 'bug chasers' not to infect themselves - "A leading scientist has expressed alarm at a trend in the West in which gay men use social networks to seek HIV-carrying sex partners in order to get infected. The "bug chasers" are often motivated by a desire to secure life-long medical care and social welfare benefits. French virologist Francoise Barré-Sinoussi, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for her life-long work in fighting Aids, said in an interview with the Post that she was unhappy to see such abuse of valuable medical resources and warned that the people doing it might not be well informed of all the risks."
Jay Liu's answer to Has political correctness made it impossible to communicate honestly or effectively? - Quora - "People are always quick to point out that political correctness is not a form of censorship because it's not part of the law. The obvious problem is how "censorship" is confined to "state censorship".
Yes, violating the subtle rules of political correctness will usually not land you in jail, but getting your entire career, public image and social standing destroyed is arguably just as bad as a stint in an actual prison. The reality is that political correctness is a far more effective and sophisticated form of censorship and thought policing than anything Goebbels could have come up with. The closest parallel I can think of to modern day America in terms of political correctness is the Cultural Revolution in China... Don't these Red Guards remind you of some other young, energetic people in the US who have tendency to organize and persecute those who hold beliefs other than their own? Oh yeah, the Social Justice Warriors!"
Why salad is so overrated - "Salad vegetables are pitifully low in nutrition. The biggest thing wrong with salads is lettuce, and the biggest thing wrong with lettuce is that it’s a leafy-green waste of resources... Charles Benbrook... and colleague Donald Davis developed a nutrient quality index — a way to rate foods based on how much of 27 nutrients they contain. Four of the five lowest-ranking vegetables (by serving size) are salad ingredients: cucumbers, radishes, iceberg lettuce and celery. (The fifth is eggplant.) Those foods’ nutritional profile can be partly explained by one simple fact: They’re almost all water... The corollary to the nutrition problem is the expense problem. The makings of a green salad — say, a head of lettuce, a cucumber and a bunch of radishes — cost about $3 at my supermarket. For that, I could buy more than two pounds of broccoli, sweet potatoes or just about any frozen vegetable going, any of which would make for a much more nutritious side dish to my roast chicken... Salad fools dieters into making bad choices... Salad has unfortunate repercussions in our food supply. Lettuce has a couple of No. 1 unenviable rankings in the food world. For starters, it’s the top source of food waste, vegetable division, becoming more than 1 billion pounds of uneaten salad every year. But it’s also the chief culprit for foodborne illnesses. According to the Centers for Disease Control, green leafies accounted for 22 percent of all food-borne illnesses from 1998-2008"
Polish nationals less likely than Dutch to claim welfare - "Polish nationals are less likely to claim welfare benefits than the native Dutch, according to new figures from the national statistics office CBS which were released on Thursday. However, other groups of immigrants and refugees are much more likely to be on benefits, the figures show.
For example, the CBS says seven out of 10 Somali nationals and six out of 10 Syrians live on welfare (bijstand), compared with just 3% of the Dutch. Afghans, Eritreans and Iranians are also much more likely to be living on welfare. ‘A high percentage do not speak the language sufficiently and a relatively large percentage are low-skilled or without any relevant education,’ the CBS said."
Trump Supporters Are Prejudiced—and So Are You - "“People with both relatively higher and lower levels of cognitive ability show approximately equal levels of intergroup bias,” write psychologists Mark Brandt of Tilburg University and Jarret Crawford of the College of New Jersey, “but toward different sets of groups”... “people with lower levels of cognitive ability express more prejudice towards ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians.” However, the researchers also found that “people with higher levels of cognitive ability express more prejudice toward Christian fundamentalists, big business, Christians, the Tea Party, and the military.” Overall, “lower levels of cognitive ability are associated with prejudice towards groups perceived as liberal/unconventional, and as having less choice over their group membership,” the researchers write. (You have no say in your ethnicity.) “At the same time, the data also suggest that higher levels of cognitive ability are associated with prejudice towards groups perceived as conservative/conventional, and as having more choice over their group membership.” (No one forces you to become a business executive.) Brandt and Crawford argue that some cognitive processes utilized by less-intelligent people do lead to prejudice, including an inability or unwillingness to see things from another’s perspective; elevated sensitivity to threat; and the need for certainty. But they note that brighter people can come up with “more self-convincing justifications for prejudice.” In other words, we can use our superior minds to convince ourselves that our emotion-based assumptions actually have merit."
BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Year Everything Changed - "Vaclav Klaus is one of Europe's longest serving political leaders. A former Prime Minister and President of the Czech Republic.
'What we really wanted in the moment of the fall of Communism... was freedom, democracy, market economy and... to be again a normal European sovereign and independent state. After 3 centuries of belonging to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. after half a century belonging to the Soviet Empire, we really wanted to be free. Nothing more... Our slogans on the streets in Prague in November 89 were 'Back to Europe'. And I was the first one who very soon started to explain the people here: back to Europe doesn't mean exactly avante [?] into the European Union... we wanted to become a normal European state.'
'That's what you are isn't it?'
'We are not. We are a member of a very specific conglomerate, grouping of countries called the European Union. To speak about independence is a joke. We wanted to be integrated in the EU but not unified. I think that the role of the national government is now rather limited. Most of the decisions come from Brussels, not from Prague here, so this is not independence'"
BBC Radio 4 - Today, 03/07/2014, What books should politicians read? - "The idea of Harold McMillan going into the garden on No 10 Downing Street and reading Jane Austen novels when it all got too much, I've always found very appealing. And I think voters might that quite appealing. I always thought it was PR but actually when you read Harold McMillan's letters, he mentions terrible times when he's Prime Minister over the Middle East and he says my only solace was reading Emma. Thank goodness for that...
Some of those classics we've mentioned, of course they're books we should all read but the thing a lot of them have in common: Emma, Middlemarch, Great Expectations is that they're wonderful studies in what is surely a politician's abiding vice, which is self-deception"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Monday's business with Rob Young - "He believes his life of crime has left him with, I suppose recruitment professionals might call them 'transferable skills'... One of my parole hearings... she said you treat crime like it's a corporate venture. You do a cost-benefit analysis to everything you do. I had to agree. A lot of guys that do that crime at that level - if you put them in running Apple or Microsoft, they would do just as good as a CEO"
DTR Podcast from Tinder & Gimlet Creative - "Mixed Signals" - Product Hunt - "Glasses make a right swipe 12% less likely"
Pornhub's 2016 Year in Review – Pornhub Insights - "Countries like Canada, the United States, Mexico, Australia, Norway and Colombia are all hitting up our ‘lesbian’ category the most. While South America, Russia, and a good portion of Western Europe and Northern Africa are more common frequenters of Pornhub’s ‘anal’ category. The sage color you see represents the higher proportion of views in the ‘Ebony’ category, which is more concentrated in Africa. And the orange that covers most of Asia, shows where the ‘hentai’ category gets the most love. There is still quite a bit of yellow spread throughout the map, which indicates a preference for the ‘teen (18+)’ category."
Isolated Low Temps May Reassure Climate Skeptics - "cold-influenced-denial may be playing out across the U.S., in particular in Appalachia and the South. Because it turns out those areas have had lots of record low temperatures in the last 12 years. And they're also by and large the same parts of the country that have high numbers of global warming skeptics. So researchers have a theory that personal experience with cold snaps could be trumping scientific facts"
The reality of lived experience!
Shoppers who wear pyjamas in Tesco are given a dressing down - "So-called "all-day pyjama syndrome" is widely seen as a growing social and sartorial problem in the UK. Earlier this year a headteacher at a school in Darlington appealed for parents to stop wearing their pyjamas at the school gates after she noticed an increase in the number of parents failing to get dressed for the school run. Some were even wearing pyjamas to school assemblies and meetings, she said."
Can't remember Marina Bay before Marina Bay Sands? This photographer captured it all through the years
Study: Ice Cream For Breakfast Boosts Brain Performance
11 really good reasons why your country should have a monarchy - "monarchical states seem to promote cohesion. A study by Sascha Becker and others shows higher trust and less corruption inside the borders of the old Habsburg empire than among the people who live just outside the empire’s historical borders... Former Bank of England rate-setter Tim Besley wrote a working paper earlier in the year suggesting that “in a country with weak executive constraints, going from a non-hereditary leader to an hereditary leader, increases the annual average economic growth of the country by 1.03 percentage points per year.” That’s a lot!"
The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation - "ethnocentrism eventually overcomes its closest competitor, humanitarianism, by exploiting humanitarian cooperation across group boundaries as world population saturates"
"Racism" is evolved
Automated book-culling software drives librarians to create fake patrons to "check out" endangered titles - "Two employees at the East Lake County Library created a fictional patron called Chuck Finley -- entering fake driver's license and address details into the library system -- and then used the account to check out 2,361 books over nine months in 2016, in order to trick the system into believing that the books they loved were being circulated to the library's patrons, thus rescuing the books from automated purges of low-popularity titles."
Healthcare workers prioritize helping people over information security (disaster ensues) - "In Workarounds to Computer Access in Healthcare Organizations: You Want My Password or a Dead Patient?, security researchers from Penn, Dartmouth and USC conducted an excellent piece of ethnographic research on health workers, shadowing them as they moved through their work environments, blithely ignoring, circumventing and sabotaging the information security measures imposed by their IT departments, because in so doing, they were saving lives... IT's imposition of password rotation schedules meant that no one knew what their passwords were from moment to moment, forcing them to write them down and share them (in some cases, IT might have had this policy set by vendors or regulators/insurers). Aggressive timeouts on terminals meant that clinicians spent an undue amount of time logging in, making it impossible to get their work done."
Elderly Catholic woman has mistakenly been praying every day to Elrond from ‘Lord of the Rings’
High marks for standardized tests - "If an exam effectively gauges a student’s mastery of U.S. history or English grammar, then teaching the test is simply a matter of helping students develop that knowledge. Teachers who feel that a test ignores something essential should commit to fixing the test, not condemning the entire practice of testing."
Japanese company replaces office workers with artificial intelligence
Muslim Groups Are Reportedly Circulating This Illustration of Santa Getting Punched in the Face - "The Anatolia Youth Association’s Istanbul University branch released an illustration of a bearded Muslim punching St. Nick in the face... a similar illustration of Santa being punched was also seen in the Former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia"
No wonder Santa shot up the Istanbul nightclub
The Reina atrocity shows how deeply Islamic fanaticism has taken hold in Turkey - "The victims of terrorism are called “martyrs” while the names of urban landmarks are changing, slowly, into Martyrdom Hill or Martyrdom Street. Ministers greet police officers, wishing them to sacrifice themselves for the nation. “God willing, you shall be martyrs too,” says the minister of urbanisation, Mehmet Özhaseki. The government is trying to cover its incompetence in both foreign and domestic policy with the language of jingoism and patriotism. Those who question the official line are labelled “betrayers” and “pawns of western powers”. Young people are told that we are a country surrounded by water on three sides and enemies on all four. As paranoia, distrust and fear intensify, the culture of coexistence dissolves... even after the horrific act of cruelty in Reina. Islamist commentators appeared on TV to say: “We are against New Year. We are against drinking alcohol and celebrations. Whoever wants to blow up whatever place may do so.” What is puzzling is how, in a country where anyone who writes anything critical about the government can be instantly sued, and possibly even arrested and put on trial, such religious or nationalist hatemongers rarely have action taken against them... Once we thought Turkey would be a shining role model for the Muslim world; now we are worried that our country may in fact be following some of its worst examples"
Santa Gets Circumcised in Turkey - "Just a day after Christmas, the Islamist whippersnappers took to the streets of Istanbul with an inflatable Santa Claus to protest against Christmas and New Year’s celebrations in Turkey. One of the protesters took a blade to the doll’s genital region and stabbed it multiple times. Prior to the knifing, demonstrators placed empty beer cans and a syringe in front of Santa, supposedly as a warning about the dangers of celebrating Christmas."
Anglo vs Hispanic Family Culture
"Going to the airport in San Juan and in Hartford exemplifies one significant, tangible difference between Puerto Rican and Anglo Protestant culture. For us, picking up a relative at the airport is a chore; we may do our wife or son “a favor” by going along for the ride, but if we can stay home and let someone else do it, we will. After all, no one wants to miss the latest episode of Survivor or Lost. But for many Puerto Ricans a trip to the airport is an anticipated, loving family experience. Six or eight family members crowd into a car bound for the airport and wait eagerly at the gate for an arriving spouse, son, or daughter. In San Juan, the crush of relatives is an everyday phenomenon. Some wait on the glass walkway, spot the relative, throw excited kisses, and then rush to the gate to embrace the relative who is already kissing the other family members. Anglos accentuate the individual and disparage the waste of time. Puerto Ricans key on the family, and for the family they have all the time in the world"
--- America Beyond Black and White. How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide / Ronald Fernandez
--- America Beyond Black and White. How Immigrants and Fusions Are Helping Us Overcome the Racial Divide / Ronald Fernandez
Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Links - 21st February 2017
South Korea Appoints 'Twitter Officer' to Monitor Donald Trump's Tweets - "The JoongAng Daily reported: “The Korean government is still in the process of building ties with Trump and does not have a lot of insight into his foreign policies—like most of the world. “His 140-character posts are currently the most effective insight into policies of the incoming administration.”"
FIFA fines British teams $100K for poppy displays - "FIFA forbids players and fans of its 211 member nations from displaying political or religious symbols during international games. This includes the poppy emblems used to remember those in the armed forces who died in the line of duty."
How Intersectionality Makes You Stupid - "whoever shouts the loudest and claims victimization on account of more facets of their identity can expect to get what they demand, regardless of the quality or even logic of what they have to say. Proponents of intersectionality have elevated its categorical paradigms of all-encompassing, omnipresent “oppression,” and its attendant, identity-based hierarchies of virtue, to that of a Weltanschauung, a new morality to replace the basic, classical liberal principles of freedom, individual rights, and equality before the law on which Western civilization is based. Because of intersectionality’s insistence that identity politics trumps all, reflexive condemnation replaces reasoned discussion, and those claiming to represent a higher good smother the rights of individuals. Likewise, intersectionality compels one to adopt agendas that have nothing to do with his or her own. Worse, in the name of “solidarity” with other supposedly “oppressed” groups, it leads to alliances with those actively hostile to one’s cause. This is how a gay rights organization led by well-meaning progressives can be duped into disinviting private citizens of the one country in the Middle East respecting the humanity of gays, all at the behest of people who use cultural relativism to excuse Muslim societies that throw homosexuals from the tops of buildings."
‘Chess worse than gambling & eating pork’ – Turkish imam
Syrian refugee 'who asked ISIS for money for cars he could drive into crowds' arrested - "Prosecutors said the man 'admitted contact with the ISIS but denied terrorist motives' - suggesting he claimed to have attempted to defraud the extremist group."
ACLU: Obama Worse Than Bush On Civil Liberty Issues
‘Screw for Denmark’ sex campaigns produce baby boom in months - "According to research by Denmark’s Politiken newspaper, the summer months of June-August this year will produce 1,200 more Danes than last summer. In total, some 16,200 babies are due to be born."
PAX South 2015: Why We Need Games Like Social Justice Warriors - "as a game journalist (represented by the Mage class here), you could greatly deplete your opponent's reputation (one of their two health bars) by choosing the "public naming and shaming" attack, but at a great cost to your own reputation too, as well it should be. Meanwhile, sticking to options that involve empathizing with, listening to, and educating your foes grants you bonuses. The dirty stuff might work in the short term, but in the long term, you really only hurt yourself and the discussion."
Tourists didn't recognise the Queen when she left her tiara at home on Balmoral walk - "Richard Griffin described how Her Majesty had gone for a walk near the grounds of Balmoral dressed in tweeds and a headscarf. So low key was her look, that a group of American tourists completely failed to realise who she was. Mr Griffin, who was speaking at a recent talk about his time working with the royals, said the Queen was keen not to blow her cover... She played along when the American tourists asked: 'Do you live round here,' simply replying that she had a house nearby. And when asked if she had met the Queen, she simply gestured to her companion and said: 'No, but he has,' according to the policeman."
Michael Fitzjohn's answer to Were soldiers returning from Vietnam really spat on in airports? - Quora - "My university was a liberal, activist place where the Vietnam war was widely condemned... The professor looked at me as if he was having a heart attack. He screamed “you’re a baby killer.” He threw me out of class and everyone cheered him as I left the room. I tried to say I was a medic. He didn't care. I learned to keep my mouth shut, live with fellow veterans, and drink. I got my degree."
Gender Differences in Partner Influences and Barriers to Condom Use Among Heterosexual Adolescents Attending a Public Sexually Transmitted Infection Clinic in Singapore - "condom use at last intercourse for both genders was negatively associated with Malay race and peer connectedness and was positively associated with confidence in the ability to use a condom correctly. Being employed was positively associated with condom use for female respondents only. For male respondents only, condom use showed a positive association with living in better housing, older age at first intercourse, and engaging in sexual intercourse with commercial sex partners. Almost all (90%) commercial sex partners suggested condom use and provided condoms compared with 8.1% of non–sex worker partners. Condom use showed a negative association with inconvenience in its use among male respondents but not female respondents."
35,000 Brits sign up for dating site helping Muslim men find multiple wives - "According to the site’s creator, 33-year-old Azad Chaiwala, secondwife.com promotes “fidelity, morality and old-fashioned values.” “Users police each other and every picture is vetted for decency. We do not allow cleavage,” the East Midlands-based businessman explained."
Iceland wants UK to join Nordic alliance of non-EU countries - "“When Britain leaves the EU, we will see a triangle that covers a large part of the globe: Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway - and now the United Kingdom,” Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson said in an interview to Iceland Monitor. The countries do not belong to the European Economic Area (EEA) or any part of the EU... The European Free Trade Association (EFTA), made up of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, will also become much more relevant after UK’s escape from the European bloc, according to the president."
Shelby Donovan Completely Misunderstood Her Mother's Christmas Gift - "Her gathered family quickly realized what Donovan thought, and they themselves began laughing, punctuated by her mother bursting out with, “Do you actually think I would get you a dildo for Christmas?” Turns out, the teen was holding the present upside down, and it was actually a cupholder to use with her morning coffee"
“Drink at least eight glasses of water a day.” Really? Is there scientific evidence for “8 × 8”? - "No scientific studies were found in support of 8 × 8. Rather, surveys of food and fluid intake on thousands of adults of both genders, analyses of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals, strongly suggest that such large amounts are not needed because the surveyed persons were presumably healthy and certainly not overtly ill. This conclusion is supported by published studies showing that caffeinated drinks (and, to a lesser extent, mild alcoholic beverages like beer in moderation) may indeed be counted toward the daily total, as well as by the large body of published experiments that attest to the precision and effectiveness of the osmoregulatory system for maintaining water balance. It is to be emphasized that the conclusion is limited to healthy adults in atemperate climate leading a largely sedentaryexistence, precisely the population and conditions that the “at least” in 8 × 8 refers to. Equally to be emphasized, lest the message of this review be misconstrued, is the fact (based on published evidence) that large intakes of fluid, equal to and greater than 8 × 8, are advisable for the treatment or prevention of some diseases and certainly are called for under special circumstances, such as vigorous work and exercise, especially in hot climates"
Premarital Sexual Intercourse Among Adolescents in an Asian Country: Multilevel Ecological Factors - "Independently significant factors for premarital sex among boys were pornography viewing (adjusted odds ratio [OR]: 5.82 [95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.34–14.43]), lack of confidence to resist peer pressure (OR: 3.84 [95% CI: 2.27–6.50]), perception that more than one half of their friends had engaged in sex (OR: 3.37 [95% CI: 1.92–5.92]), permissiveness regarding premarital sex (OR: 3.41 [95% CI: 2.10–5.55]), involvement in gang activities (OR: 3.45 [95% CI: 1.66–7.15]), drinking (OR: 1.77 [95% CI: 1.07–2.94]), smoking (OR: 1.91 [95% CI: 1.14–3.20]), and living in low-cost housing (OR: 3.25 [95% CI: 1.64–6.43]). For girls, additional factors were previous sexual abuse (OR: 7.81 [95% CI: 2.50–24.41]) and dropping out of school (OR: 2.72 [95% CI: 1.32–5.61]), and stronger associations were found for lack of confidence to resist peer pressure (OR: 5.56 [95% CI: 2.94–10.53]) and permissiveness regarding premarital sex (OR: 6.25 [95% CI: 3.30–11.83]). Exposure to persons with HIV/AIDS or sexually transmitted infections in the media was negatively associated with sex for boys (OR: 0.27 [95% CI: 0.16–0.45]) and girls (OR: 0.24 [95% CI: 0.13–0.47])."
Someone Drew the Disney Princesses With Normal Bodies and They Look Beautiful - "
Comment: "what does snow white having blue hair and Jasmine having tattoos have to do with anything? That doesn't make them "normal". Smh social media..."
"Ummm ... they're cartoons. I've never seen a "normal" mouse that looked like Mickey Mouse, but I never felt the urge to complain."
"Before you know it, they are going to start criticizing Sci-fi and calling those unrealistic too."
"so all white girls are chubby with a large waist?"
"instead of shaming bigger girls we can start shaming skinner girls. Brilliant!"
"Artist seems to only make the white characters overweight - interesting"
Why not redraw the Disney princesses so they look as good as normal people, i.e. make them uglier? Why celebrate body positivity, i.e. being fat, but not being ugly?
If you redraw them as they would be in an African country, i.e. as black, is that blackface?
Friend: "They should draw Disney princesses with type 2 diabetes
Body positivity is fucking dangerous for Asian people
We are more vulnerable to obesity related diseases than Ang Mohs, who tolerate being hamplanets much better"
Weird crash with multiple windows showing up - "This same thing happened to my computer just the other day. I had been away and came back to discover well over 50 mysterious windows open with strange titles, including:
- igfxtrayWindow
- MCI command handling window
- PersistWndName
- ReceiverMessageWindow
and many more, some of which were extremely cryptic. Some did not have titles at all. Several of them were tiny, not much bigger than a short title bar. A few looked like they had something to do with Citrix. Most of them looked like they were spawned from the applications I had running at the time, especially Windows/Internet Explorer, which claimed at least 40 of the windows. I looked at the task manager and saw that sidebar.exe and several instances of iexplore.exe were hogging the CPU. Also, the Start menu was blank."
"Fuck Trump": Four In Custody After Man Tortured In Facebook Live Video - "“Fuck Donald Trump, fuck white people,” the man says... Johnson said police were investigating if the incident was a hate crime, but so far he said there was no indication it was motivated by politics or race... A second video shows the victim being threatened with a knife until he says, “Fuck Donald Trump,” gets on his knees, and kisses the floor."
If white people kidnapped and tortured a black person, made him say "Fuck Obama" and the police said "there was no indication it was motivated by politics or race...
CNN Panelist Blames Trump For Racist Torture of Mentally Disabled Man
Pro-Trump narratives converge in one awful attack streamed on Facebook - The Washington Post - "If the attackers had been white and the victim had been black, the incident would have, of course, conjured America's ugly history of white mobs committing violence against black people. There is no parallel history of the reverse happening on anything remotely approaching the same scale."
Comment: "So Callum Borchers wrote this? No more credibility for him. Is he living in the real world?
Lucas Lynch - A disabled child is tortured in Chicago and the... - "A disabled child is tortured in Chicago and the Whataboutery being tossed around by members of the social justice left is predictable and depressing as ever. What about George Zimmerman not being in jail and Eric Garner being murdered? Well, at the time, you pointed out how ridiculous it was to divert the focus from the victims of the crimes just as they happened. "All Lives Matter" and "Not all men" rightfully became objects of ridicule and satire as people tried to deflect from the horrific reality of what had just taken place... Even worse, are you *more* concerned that the assailants saying "Fuck white people" makes your ideology look bad more than the state of the victim? Because you basically are saying your ideology is more important than a human being - pretty similar to people choosing to defend the Confederate flag in the wake of the Dylan Roof shooting rather than focusing on the victims and the pernicious ideas that inspired Roof to take their lives. Lost in it all is the victim himself. I wish him a speedy recovery, even though he's a privileged white male and thus the root of all evil."
Wide Racial Divide in Sentencing - WSJ - "Prison sentences of black men were nearly 20% longer than those of white men for similar crimes in recent years, an analysis by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found... the findings drew criticism from advocacy groups and researchers, who said the commission's focus on the very end of the criminal-justice process ignored possible bias at earlier stages, such as when a person is arrested and charged, or enters into a plea deal with prosecutors"
Black Lives Matter activist giving Yale lecture compares protests to Boston Tea Party - "A prominent Black Lives Matter activist has offered a defense of violent looters who plundered U.S. cities like Ferguson and Baltimore in a lecture series delivered at Yale. DeRay McKesson, 30, was invited to the prestigious school to lecture on the movement... McKesson, a former math teacher is a prominent activist associated with Black Lives Matter. He often speaks to the media from large-scale protests in strife-ridden areas across the country. He has amassed 234,000 Twitter followers and Hillary Clinton has personally invited him to political meetings."
Merkel wanted refugees to be lorry drivers - "German Chancellor Angela Merkel in September tried to push through a plan that would allow refugees to be trained and hired as lorry drivers – just months before a lorry was used by a suspected asylum-seeker to mow down civilians during Monday’s Berlin terror attack. Merkel encouraged companies to hire refugees – even if they hadn’t yet been granted asylum – as drivers and also wanted to make it cheaper for migrants to trade in their foreign driver’s license for a German one... the Organization of German Profession Lorry Drivers (BDBK) fought back. “We give a definite no to use refugees as lorry drivers,” BDBK chairman Wolfgang Westermann said at the time. “Professional lorry drivers need a thorough and qualified education. You cannot let everyone drive off in a 40-ton lorry.”
FIFA fines British teams $100K for poppy displays - "FIFA forbids players and fans of its 211 member nations from displaying political or religious symbols during international games. This includes the poppy emblems used to remember those in the armed forces who died in the line of duty."
How Intersectionality Makes You Stupid - "whoever shouts the loudest and claims victimization on account of more facets of their identity can expect to get what they demand, regardless of the quality or even logic of what they have to say. Proponents of intersectionality have elevated its categorical paradigms of all-encompassing, omnipresent “oppression,” and its attendant, identity-based hierarchies of virtue, to that of a Weltanschauung, a new morality to replace the basic, classical liberal principles of freedom, individual rights, and equality before the law on which Western civilization is based. Because of intersectionality’s insistence that identity politics trumps all, reflexive condemnation replaces reasoned discussion, and those claiming to represent a higher good smother the rights of individuals. Likewise, intersectionality compels one to adopt agendas that have nothing to do with his or her own. Worse, in the name of “solidarity” with other supposedly “oppressed” groups, it leads to alliances with those actively hostile to one’s cause. This is how a gay rights organization led by well-meaning progressives can be duped into disinviting private citizens of the one country in the Middle East respecting the humanity of gays, all at the behest of people who use cultural relativism to excuse Muslim societies that throw homosexuals from the tops of buildings."
‘Chess worse than gambling & eating pork’ – Turkish imam
Syrian refugee 'who asked ISIS for money for cars he could drive into crowds' arrested - "Prosecutors said the man 'admitted contact with the ISIS but denied terrorist motives' - suggesting he claimed to have attempted to defraud the extremist group."
ACLU: Obama Worse Than Bush On Civil Liberty Issues
‘Screw for Denmark’ sex campaigns produce baby boom in months - "According to research by Denmark’s Politiken newspaper, the summer months of June-August this year will produce 1,200 more Danes than last summer. In total, some 16,200 babies are due to be born."
PAX South 2015: Why We Need Games Like Social Justice Warriors - "as a game journalist (represented by the Mage class here), you could greatly deplete your opponent's reputation (one of their two health bars) by choosing the "public naming and shaming" attack, but at a great cost to your own reputation too, as well it should be. Meanwhile, sticking to options that involve empathizing with, listening to, and educating your foes grants you bonuses. The dirty stuff might work in the short term, but in the long term, you really only hurt yourself and the discussion."
Tourists didn't recognise the Queen when she left her tiara at home on Balmoral walk - "Richard Griffin described how Her Majesty had gone for a walk near the grounds of Balmoral dressed in tweeds and a headscarf. So low key was her look, that a group of American tourists completely failed to realise who she was. Mr Griffin, who was speaking at a recent talk about his time working with the royals, said the Queen was keen not to blow her cover... She played along when the American tourists asked: 'Do you live round here,' simply replying that she had a house nearby. And when asked if she had met the Queen, she simply gestured to her companion and said: 'No, but he has,' according to the policeman."
Michael Fitzjohn's answer to Were soldiers returning from Vietnam really spat on in airports? - Quora - "My university was a liberal, activist place where the Vietnam war was widely condemned... The professor looked at me as if he was having a heart attack. He screamed “you’re a baby killer.” He threw me out of class and everyone cheered him as I left the room. I tried to say I was a medic. He didn't care. I learned to keep my mouth shut, live with fellow veterans, and drink. I got my degree."
Gender Differences in Partner Influences and Barriers to Condom Use Among Heterosexual Adolescents Attending a Public Sexually Transmitted Infection Clinic in Singapore - "condom use at last intercourse for both genders was negatively associated with Malay race and peer connectedness and was positively associated with confidence in the ability to use a condom correctly. Being employed was positively associated with condom use for female respondents only. For male respondents only, condom use showed a positive association with living in better housing, older age at first intercourse, and engaging in sexual intercourse with commercial sex partners. Almost all (90%) commercial sex partners suggested condom use and provided condoms compared with 8.1% of non–sex worker partners. Condom use showed a negative association with inconvenience in its use among male respondents but not female respondents."
35,000 Brits sign up for dating site helping Muslim men find multiple wives - "According to the site’s creator, 33-year-old Azad Chaiwala, secondwife.com promotes “fidelity, morality and old-fashioned values.” “Users police each other and every picture is vetted for decency. We do not allow cleavage,” the East Midlands-based businessman explained."
Iceland wants UK to join Nordic alliance of non-EU countries - "“When Britain leaves the EU, we will see a triangle that covers a large part of the globe: Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Norway - and now the United Kingdom,” Iceland’s President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson said in an interview to Iceland Monitor. The countries do not belong to the European Economic Area (EEA) or any part of the EU... The European Free Trade Association (EFTA), made up of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland, will also become much more relevant after UK’s escape from the European bloc, according to the president."
Shelby Donovan Completely Misunderstood Her Mother's Christmas Gift - "Her gathered family quickly realized what Donovan thought, and they themselves began laughing, punctuated by her mother bursting out with, “Do you actually think I would get you a dildo for Christmas?” Turns out, the teen was holding the present upside down, and it was actually a cupholder to use with her morning coffee"
“Drink at least eight glasses of water a day.” Really? Is there scientific evidence for “8 × 8”? - "No scientific studies were found in support of 8 × 8. Rather, surveys of food and fluid intake on thousands of adults of both genders, analyses of which have been published in peer-reviewed journals, strongly suggest that such large amounts are not needed because the surveyed persons were presumably healthy and certainly not overtly ill. This conclusion is supported by published studies showing that caffeinated drinks (and, to a lesser extent, mild alcoholic beverages like beer in moderation) may indeed be counted toward the daily total, as well as by the large body of published experiments that attest to the precision and effectiveness of the osmoregulatory system for maintaining water balance. It is to be emphasized that the conclusion is limited to healthy adults in atemperate climate leading a largely sedentaryexistence, precisely the population and conditions that the “at least” in 8 × 8 refers to. Equally to be emphasized, lest the message of this review be misconstrued, is the fact (based on published evidence) that large intakes of fluid, equal to and greater than 8 × 8, are advisable for the treatment or prevention of some diseases and certainly are called for under special circumstances, such as vigorous work and exercise, especially in hot climates"
Premarital Sexual Intercourse Among Adolescents in an Asian Country: Multilevel Ecological Factors - "Independently significant factors for premarital sex among boys were pornography viewing (adjusted odds ratio [OR]: 5.82 [95% confidence interval [CI]: 2.34–14.43]), lack of confidence to resist peer pressure (OR: 3.84 [95% CI: 2.27–6.50]), perception that more than one half of their friends had engaged in sex (OR: 3.37 [95% CI: 1.92–5.92]), permissiveness regarding premarital sex (OR: 3.41 [95% CI: 2.10–5.55]), involvement in gang activities (OR: 3.45 [95% CI: 1.66–7.15]), drinking (OR: 1.77 [95% CI: 1.07–2.94]), smoking (OR: 1.91 [95% CI: 1.14–3.20]), and living in low-cost housing (OR: 3.25 [95% CI: 1.64–6.43]). For girls, additional factors were previous sexual abuse (OR: 7.81 [95% CI: 2.50–24.41]) and dropping out of school (OR: 2.72 [95% CI: 1.32–5.61]), and stronger associations were found for lack of confidence to resist peer pressure (OR: 5.56 [95% CI: 2.94–10.53]) and permissiveness regarding premarital sex (OR: 6.25 [95% CI: 3.30–11.83]). Exposure to persons with HIV/AIDS or sexually transmitted infections in the media was negatively associated with sex for boys (OR: 0.27 [95% CI: 0.16–0.45]) and girls (OR: 0.24 [95% CI: 0.13–0.47])."
Someone Drew the Disney Princesses With Normal Bodies and They Look Beautiful - "
Comment: "what does snow white having blue hair and Jasmine having tattoos have to do with anything? That doesn't make them "normal". Smh social media..."
"Ummm ... they're cartoons. I've never seen a "normal" mouse that looked like Mickey Mouse, but I never felt the urge to complain."
"Before you know it, they are going to start criticizing Sci-fi and calling those unrealistic too."
"so all white girls are chubby with a large waist?"
"instead of shaming bigger girls we can start shaming skinner girls. Brilliant!"
"Artist seems to only make the white characters overweight - interesting"
Why not redraw the Disney princesses so they look as good as normal people, i.e. make them uglier? Why celebrate body positivity, i.e. being fat, but not being ugly?
If you redraw them as they would be in an African country, i.e. as black, is that blackface?
Friend: "They should draw Disney princesses with type 2 diabetes
Body positivity is fucking dangerous for Asian people
We are more vulnerable to obesity related diseases than Ang Mohs, who tolerate being hamplanets much better"
Weird crash with multiple windows showing up - "This same thing happened to my computer just the other day. I had been away and came back to discover well over 50 mysterious windows open with strange titles, including:
- igfxtrayWindow
- MCI command handling window
- PersistWndName
- ReceiverMessageWindow
and many more, some of which were extremely cryptic. Some did not have titles at all. Several of them were tiny, not much bigger than a short title bar. A few looked like they had something to do with Citrix. Most of them looked like they were spawned from the applications I had running at the time, especially Windows/Internet Explorer, which claimed at least 40 of the windows. I looked at the task manager and saw that sidebar.exe and several instances of iexplore.exe were hogging the CPU. Also, the Start menu was blank."
"Fuck Trump": Four In Custody After Man Tortured In Facebook Live Video - "“Fuck Donald Trump, fuck white people,” the man says... Johnson said police were investigating if the incident was a hate crime, but so far he said there was no indication it was motivated by politics or race... A second video shows the victim being threatened with a knife until he says, “Fuck Donald Trump,” gets on his knees, and kisses the floor."
If white people kidnapped and tortured a black person, made him say "Fuck Obama" and the police said "there was no indication it was motivated by politics or race...
CNN Panelist Blames Trump For Racist Torture of Mentally Disabled Man
Pro-Trump narratives converge in one awful attack streamed on Facebook - The Washington Post - "If the attackers had been white and the victim had been black, the incident would have, of course, conjured America's ugly history of white mobs committing violence against black people. There is no parallel history of the reverse happening on anything remotely approaching the same scale."
Comment: "So Callum Borchers wrote this? No more credibility for him. Is he living in the real world?
Lucas Lynch - A disabled child is tortured in Chicago and the... - "A disabled child is tortured in Chicago and the Whataboutery being tossed around by members of the social justice left is predictable and depressing as ever. What about George Zimmerman not being in jail and Eric Garner being murdered? Well, at the time, you pointed out how ridiculous it was to divert the focus from the victims of the crimes just as they happened. "All Lives Matter" and "Not all men" rightfully became objects of ridicule and satire as people tried to deflect from the horrific reality of what had just taken place... Even worse, are you *more* concerned that the assailants saying "Fuck white people" makes your ideology look bad more than the state of the victim? Because you basically are saying your ideology is more important than a human being - pretty similar to people choosing to defend the Confederate flag in the wake of the Dylan Roof shooting rather than focusing on the victims and the pernicious ideas that inspired Roof to take their lives. Lost in it all is the victim himself. I wish him a speedy recovery, even though he's a privileged white male and thus the root of all evil."
Wide Racial Divide in Sentencing - WSJ - "Prison sentences of black men were nearly 20% longer than those of white men for similar crimes in recent years, an analysis by the U.S. Sentencing Commission found... the findings drew criticism from advocacy groups and researchers, who said the commission's focus on the very end of the criminal-justice process ignored possible bias at earlier stages, such as when a person is arrested and charged, or enters into a plea deal with prosecutors"
Black Lives Matter activist giving Yale lecture compares protests to Boston Tea Party - "A prominent Black Lives Matter activist has offered a defense of violent looters who plundered U.S. cities like Ferguson and Baltimore in a lecture series delivered at Yale. DeRay McKesson, 30, was invited to the prestigious school to lecture on the movement... McKesson, a former math teacher is a prominent activist associated with Black Lives Matter. He often speaks to the media from large-scale protests in strife-ridden areas across the country. He has amassed 234,000 Twitter followers and Hillary Clinton has personally invited him to political meetings."
Merkel wanted refugees to be lorry drivers - "German Chancellor Angela Merkel in September tried to push through a plan that would allow refugees to be trained and hired as lorry drivers – just months before a lorry was used by a suspected asylum-seeker to mow down civilians during Monday’s Berlin terror attack. Merkel encouraged companies to hire refugees – even if they hadn’t yet been granted asylum – as drivers and also wanted to make it cheaper for migrants to trade in their foreign driver’s license for a German one... the Organization of German Profession Lorry Drivers (BDBK) fought back. “We give a definite no to use refugees as lorry drivers,” BDBK chairman Wolfgang Westermann said at the time. “Professional lorry drivers need a thorough and qualified education. You cannot let everyone drive off in a 40-ton lorry.”