Links - 14th February 2018 (2)

White Athletes Still Standing For The Anthem Are Standing For White Supremacy
Is it any wonder why many people think liberals hate their countries?
Comment: "Whew. We've gone from "you may" to "you must" in record time on this one. A random marginal NFL player decided to protest and now if you are "still" not following his lead, you are the worst kind of human imaginable. You're stealing more than a few bases here."

Ninety Two Percent: Examining the Birth Trends, Family Structure, Economic Standing, Paternal Relationships, and Emotional Stability of Biracial Children with African American Fathers by Tiffany N. Calloway - "92% of biracial children with African American fathers are born out of wedlock and 82% end up on government assistance"

Why Swedish workplaces aren't as equal as you think - "In 2016, more than 80% of managers at listed Swedish companies were men and not a single new business on the stock market had a woman boss. The main reason for this imbalance is that traditional gender stereotypes prevail, despite decades of legislation designed to even things out, says Ms Lundeteg. "It's possible to live a gender-equal life in Sweden, but we don't do it because of traditions. "As a man you're supposed to be the one who works and brings home the meat to the cave. It's about stereotypes and privileges that will take time to break down.""
"When burning witches doesn't stop the drought, that means witch magic is very powerful and more witches need to be burnt."

What really happened when Swedes tried six-hour days? - "During the first 18 months of the trial the nurses working shorter hours logged less sick leave, reported better perceived health and boosted their productivity by organising 85% more activities for their patients, from nature walks to sing-a-longs. However, the project also faced tough criticism from those concerned that the costs outweighed the benefits... "I think the six-hour work day would be most effective in organisations - such as hospitals - where you work for six hours and then you just leave [the workplace] and go home. "It might be less effective for organisations where the borders between work and private life are not so clear," he suggests"

Asian Americans: 10 Warning Signs That Show You're Siding With Whiteness - Everyday Feminism - "Our privilege leads us to identify with systems of thought like political conservatism, white liberalism, and white feminism"
Whiteness = success? Liberals throwing Asians under the bus is not new but this just makes it more explicit

Multiple arrested after fight inside Berkeley’s ’empathy tent’ - "The protest was led by Joey Gibson, leader of a group called Patriot Prayer. Gibson had called for a rally after student organizers canceled a planned “Free Speech Week.” Counterprotesters determined to shut the event down got into shouting matches and scuffles with Gibson and his supporters inside the tent and later in a city park... “If you look at them, it’s ridiculous,” Marquis told the Los Angeles Times. “You’ve got a guy with purple hair with a f—ing lightsaber talking about Hitler. It’s hard for me to take any of this seriously.”"

The Atomic Bomb Considered As Hungarian High School Science Fair Project - "every single person I mentioned above is of Jewish descent... Ashkenazi Jews frequently did well even in countries where they were persecuted. Nor is it obviously linked to Jewish culture; Jews from other regions of the world show no such advantage. So what’s going on?... Ashkenazi Jews were persecuted for the better part of a millennium, and the particular form of this persecution was locking them out of various jobs until the main career opportunities open to them were things like banker, merchant, and doctor... Due to persecution, Jews were pushed into cognitively-demanding occupations like banker or merchant and forced to sink or swim. The ones who swam – people who were intellectually up to the challenge – had more kids than the ones who sank, producing an evolutionary pressure in favor of intelligence greater than that in any other ethnic group. Just as Africans experiencing evolutionary pressure for malaria resistance developed the sickle cell gene, so Ashkenazim experiencing evolutionary pressure for intelligence developed a bunch of genes which increased heterozygotes’ IQ but caused serious genetic disease in homozygotes. As a result, Ashkenazi ended up somewhat more intelligent – and somewhat more prone to genetic disease – than the rest of the European population. If true, this would explain the 27% of Nobel Prizes and 50% of world chess champions thing. But one still has to ask – everywhere had Jews. Why Hungary in particular? What was so special about Budapest in the early 1900s?"
Persecution and discrimination don't affect all groups equally

Transracial Adoption and the Black-White IQ Gap - "The relevance of the home environment is also cast into doubt by early intervention studies. In these studies, a group of disadvantaged kids is exposed to an extremely enriching and stimulating cognitive environment. Home life, nutrition, education, etc,. are all improved. These programs produce IQ gains while they are ongoing, but meta-analyses have shown that these gains completely disappear by the time the kids grow up (Protzko, 2015). The fact that massively improving home life doesn’t produce lasting effects on IQ clearly supports the notion that the home environment cannot explain why Blacks and Whites differ in IQ scores in adulthood... 12 of the biracial children’s adopting parents falsely believed that they had two Black parents and their IQs did not significantly differ from the other 56 biracial children. This study clearly supports the contention that differences in home environments cannot explain the black-white IQ gap. It also suggests that whatever the cause is may become stronger with time. This could be either genes or the non-home environment. Because the heritability of IQ increases with age, the so-called “Wilson effect”, a hereditarian would probably predict that the black-white IQ gap would increase with age, and/or that genes would become a more important factor in it with age (Bouchard 2013). On the other hand, an environmentalist could argue that the effect of the non-home environment accumulates over time. Either interpretation is plausible."

The Right to Religious Conversion: Between Apostasy and Proselytization - "the right to be convinced and to convert from Islam to another religion is held by only a minority of Muslim scholars. This view of religious freedom is however not shared by the vast majority of Muslim scholars both past as well as present. Most classical and modern Muslim jurists regard apostasy ( riddah ), defined by them as an act of rejection of faith committed by a Muslim whose Islam had been affirmed without coercion, as a crime deserving the death penalty . Almost all traditional books of Islamic jurisprudence ( fiqh ) deal extensively with the penalties to be imposed on apostates such as the disposition of the apostate’s property and inheritance and the dissolution of their marriages."

I Know Why So Many Angry Women Have Blue Hair - "If you’re young, were born with XX chromosomes, and want the world know you wield poison and you’re not afraid to use it, there’s no clearer or more immediate way to signal how dangerous you are than dipping your coconut into a vat of de rigueur Manic Panic. Take one look at Twitter – or, worse, Tumblr – and you’ll see that, increasingly, the barmiest, angriest feminist cry-babies in the world are rallying together under the Blue Banner... Nature has a name for wielding unusual colour as a warning sign: aposematism, from the Greek ‘away’ and ‘sign’. And blue is one of the most unnatural colours of them all... When blue hair alone isn’t enough, pray silence for the Free Your Pits “movement” (like a bowel movement, only less enjoyable) which encourages armpit hair to be dyed."

Thoughts on white people using dark-skinned emoji - "I came across an incident involving Kendall Jenner. In August, some people on social media called her out for using a fist bump emoji in a skin tone that was darker than her own. Some people accused her of cultural appropriation... The logical step, in my mind, was to get my co-workers and people on Twitter to chime in. I simply asked them if it’s ok for white people to use emoji with darker skin-tones. According to my Twitter poll, the answer is no. Of the 239 people who voted, 54 percent said it’s not, 33 percent said yes and 13 percent said “only if they’re tan.”... He then pointed to a Wikipedia page about minstrel shows, which entailed white people dressing up in blackface to negatively portray black people. He then added, “My blackness is not for your entertainment.”... Another white friend of mine on Facebook noted that when it comes to topics pertaining to civil rights and human rights, it feels weird to use a white fist, which he said he can’t help but associate with white power... the yellow one is the default. But when enough white people use yellow, it’s possible that it could result in the presumption that yellow equals white. Then, yellow is no longer neutral but becomes yet another embodiment of whiteness."
This is why introducing diverse emoji was a bad idea. Grievance mongers will always find a new angle to complain

Zombie vs Baby - Imgur

Finnish anti-rape video raises Star Wars, The Force comparisons - "POLICE in Finland have been panned over an absurd anti-rape video which appears to show a woman using ‘The Force’ to repel a would-be attacker. The video, aired on state broadcaster Yle, outlines Finnish police’s “top three methods” against street harassment: “Say ‘No!’, push and use your handbag”. The anti-rape video has been likened to advice given by the mayor of Cologne to remain at “arm’s length” from attackers, and by the mayor of the German town of Bad Scherma that schoolgirls should not “provoke” migrants to avoid being sexually assaulted... Finnish police revealed widespread reports of sexual assault committed by migrants during New Year celebrations in the capital, mirroring the Cologne attacks. Ilkka Koskimaki, the deputy chief of police in Helsinki, told TheTelegraph: “This phenomenon is new in Finnish sexual crime history. We have never before had this kind of sexual harassment happening at New Year’s Eve.”"

A Proposal for Islam - The New York Times - "I was miserable, locked in a holding cell by Malaysia’s “religious police.”... the Islamic Renaissance Front, a reformist, progressive Muslim organization in Malaysia, invited me to give a series of lectures on Islam, reason and freedom... there is a major problem in Islam today: a passion to impose religion, rather than merely proposing it, a mind-set that most Christians left behind at the time of the Inquisition. Luckily, there are antidotes within Islam to this problem. One of them is the Quranic verse that the JAWI officers repeatedly chided me for daring to recite: “No compulsion in religion.” In fact, mainstream Muslim tradition, reflecting its illiberal context, never fully appreciated the freedom implied by this verse — and other ones with similar messages. “The ‘no compulsion’ verse was a problem to the earliest exegetes,” as Patricia Crone, a scholar of Islamic history, has noted. “And they reacted by interpreting it restrictively.” The verse was declared “abrogated,” or its scope was radically limited. This is still evident in a parenthetical that is too frequently inserted into translations of the verse. “There shall be no compulsion in religion (in becoming a Muslim).” I’d known that Saudi translations added those extra words at the end. Now I have learned that the Malaysian authorities do, too"
Are people still calling Malaysia a moderate Islamic country?

North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal Threatens China’s Path to Power - NYTimes.com - "China has more nuclear-armed neighbors than any country in the world: Russia, India, Pakistan and now North Korea. But that situation is partly one of its own making."

How to Make Fun of Nazis - The New York Times - "For decades, Wunsiedel, a German town near the Czech border, has struggled with a parade of unwanted visitors. It was the original burial place of one of Adolf Hitler’s deputies, a man named Rudolf Hess. And every year, to residents’ chagrin, neo-Nazis marched to his grave site. The town had staged counterdemonstrations to dissuade these pilgrims. In 2011 it had exhumed Hess’s body and even removed his grave stone. But undeterred, the neo-Nazis returned. So in 2014, the town tried a different tactic: humorous subversion. The campaign, called Rechts Gegen Rechts — the Right Against the Right — turned the march into Germany’s “most involuntary walkathon.” For every meter the neo-Nazis marched, local residents and businesses pledged to donate 10 euros (then equivalent to about $12.50) to a program that helps people leave right-wing extremist groups, called EXIT Deutschland... Violence directed at white nationalists only fuels their narrative of victimhood — of a hounded, soon-to-be-minority who can’t exercise their rights to free speech without getting pummeled. It also probably helps them recruit. And more broadly, if violence against minorities is what you find repugnant in neo-Nazi rhetoric, then “you are using the very force you’re trying to overcome”. Most important perhaps, violence is just not as effective as nonviolence. In their 2011 book, “Why Civil Resistance Works,” Dr. Stephan and Erica Chenoweth examined how struggles are won. They found that in over 320 conflicts between 1900 and 2006, nonviolent resistance was more than twice as effective as violent resistance in achieving change. And nonviolent struggles were resolved much sooner than violent ones. The main reason, Dr. Stephan explained to me, was that nonviolent struggles attracted more allies more quickly. Violent struggles, on the other hand, often repelled people and dragged on for years."
In other words, violence (and punching "Nazis") doesn't work
This suggests that punching "Nazis" is just a cover for deeper issues

Serbian doctor tells of transgender reversals - "Prof Djordjevic fears money is at the root of the problem, and says his reversal patients have told him about making initial inquiries to surgeries and simply being asked to send a cheque in return. "I have heard stories of people visiting surgeries who only checked if they had the money to pay," he says. "We have to stop this. As a community, we have to make very strong rules: nobody who wants to make this type of surgery or just make money can be allowed to do so." To date, all of his reversals have been transgender women aged over 30 wanting to restore their male genitalia. Over the last two decades, the average age of his patients has more than halved, from 45 to 21. While the World Professional Association for Transgender Health guidelines currently state nobody under the age of 18 should undergo surgery, Prof Djordjevic fears this age limit could soon be reduced to include minors. Were that to happen, he says, he would refuse to abide by the rules. "I'm afraid what will happen five to 10 years later with this person," he says. "It is more than about surgery; it's an issue of human rights. I could not accept them as a patient as I'd be afraid what would happen to their mind." Referrals to adult and child gender identity clinics in the UK have increased dramatically over the past 10 years. In April, the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, the only clinic for adolescents in England, reported 2,016 referrals to its gender identity development service, a 42 per cent rise compared to the previous year, which in itself marked a 104 per cent increase on the year before that... a Monmouthshire MP, Dr Helen Webberley, was being investigated by the General Medical Council (GMC), following complaints from two GPs that she had treated children as young as 12 with hormones at her private clinic, which specialises in gender issues."

Women's groups withdraw support for joint report on gender inequality - "A group of local non-government organisations have been working together for the first time to submit a joint report on gender discrimination to a United Nations (UN) committee. But fault lines in the community have emerged, even before the final draft of the report for the UN's Convention for the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (Cedaw) committee was presented. A media conference on Friday (Sept 29) that would have revealed the details of this report was cancelled with about three hours' notice. No reasons for the cancellation were immediately available. The Straits Times understands that at least four women’s groups – including the Singapore Muslim Women’s Association (PPIS), the People’s Association’s Women’s Integration Network and the NTUC Women and Family Unit – had previously decided to withdraw support for the report because they found some parts of the report too divisive. The supposedly contentious points in the report included a call for the removal of Section 377A of the Penal Code which criminalises sex between men, a shift away from abstinence-based sex education, a ban on polygamy, and tighter rules on Muslim inheritance and marriage."
Aren't the feminists concerned that they are perpetuating stereotypes that women can't work together?
Who in their right mind would think a Muslim group would remove 377A and ban polygamy?
"Ideological differences aside, why would you include a law banning men having sex with each other in a report about discrimination against women? Last time your English teacher never teach you to write on point is it?"

Why Do Orchestras Seem to Play Behind the Beat?