Links - 19th March 2018 (2)

Happiness in modern society: Why intelligence and ethnic composition matter - "White Americans had significantly greater life satisfaction than all other ethnic groups in the US and this was largely due to the fact that they were the majority ethnic group; minority Americans who lived in counties where they were the numerical majority had just as much life satisfaction as White Americans did. Further, the association between ethnic composition and life satisfaction was significantly stronger among less intelligent individuals"
Diversity apparently doesn't make people happy

Citi Cyber Tuesdays Terms and Conditions - "“Citibank Customer” means any individual who (i) has an existing banking relationship with Citibank, (ii) has a Citibank Online account or is eligible to register for a Citibank Online account and (iii) is not a U.S. Person"
The US tax code - so complicated that you need to exclude anyone with a connection to the US from your promotions

Jailed for a Facebook post: how US police target critics with arrest and prosecution - "Robert Peralta’s life was derailed by a single Facebook comment. When the San Franciscan saw a well-known local activist had posted about being “choked” and “slammed” by a sheriff’s deputy at city hall, Peralta fired off a short response: “Wow, brother they wanna hit our general. It’s time to strike back. Let’s burn this motherfucker’s house down”... “On Facebook, you comment on so many things in minutes,” he said in a recent interview. “I didn’t even mean it”... Chris Wahmhoff, a 38-year-old Michigan activist who was convicted of a felony for an oil pipeline protest action, got into trouble last year when he criticized governor Rick Snyder on Facebook amid the Flint water crisis, writing: “So when y’all are ready to march in and take his ass across the street, I have my torch, I got warm socks. I’m waitin on y’all … ” The comment led to a probation violation charge for “threatening behavior”, even though Wahmhoff insisted that he was trying to argue for the governor’s arrest – that he be taken from his office across the street to the police department."
Apparently inciting violence should be protected political speech

Amid Widespread Racial Biases in School Suspensions, Teachers Say No to Federal Ban on ‘Disparate Impact’ Discipline - "In an effort to combat disciplinary bias, the federal government has warned every school district in the country that they face legal action if their discipline policies have a “disparate impact”—“a disproportionate and unjustified effect”—on students of a particular race. Still, despite widespread concern about the “discipline gap,” the recommendation has sparked a good deal of backlash, including from pundits who’ve speculated that children of color will actually be the ones most harmed. The administration’s guidelines “will encourage schools to tolerate disruptive and dangerous behavior lest they have too many students of one race being punished,” wrote the education-law expert Joshua Dunn in a Fordham Institute blog post last year. “The effect will be to punish students who behave and want to learn since their education will be sabotaged by troublemakers. And the disruptive will certainly learn, and learn quickly, that their schools are now tolerating even more disruptive behavior.”... The researchers administered the poll after President Obama made it a priority for teachers to look at these behaviors"
Apparently we need racial quotas for punishment now

How liberal discipline policies are making schools less safe - "In Syracuse, meanwhile, teachers complain student behavior has worsened since the school district collapsed discipline structures in favor of restorative justice practices. They say teens are more apt to fight, mouth off to teachers and roam the halls under the more lenient policy. They’re even seeing increasingly violent behavior among elementary school children... After a black high-school boy repeatedly punched his teacher in the face, sending her to the emergency room, the teacher, who is white, was advised by the assistant principal not to press charges. The administrator lectured her about how hard it is for young black men to overcome a criminal record. Worse, she was told she should examine what role she, “as a white woman” holding unconscious racial biases, played in the attack, according to the Willamette (Oregon) Week. A white sixth-grade teacher at a mostly black Washington, DC, school told the US Commission on Civil Rights she had similar “conversations” in which she was told that the bad behavior of black boys is mainly the teacher’s fault... The training sessions, which often run several days, are led by civil-rights activist groups seeking “racial justice.”"

Three Simple Rules Poor Teens Should Follow to Join the Middle Class - "Let politicians, schoolteachers and administrators, community leaders, ministers and parents drill into children the message that in a free society, they enter adulthood with three major responsibilities: at least finish high school, get a full-time job and wait until age 21 to get married and have children. Our research shows that of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2 percent are in poverty and nearly 75 percent have joined the middle class (defined as earning around $55,000 or more per year). There are surely influences other than these principles at play, but following them guides a young adult away from poverty and toward the middle class... The recent attacks by Planned Parenthood on Michael Bloomberg, New York City’s mayor, for launching a campaign designed to inform teenagers of the consequences of teen pregnancy provides a good example of how many in our society face the effects of nonmarital births on teen mothers and their children... Along comes Bloomberg with a direct message to get the attention of teenage girls and warn them not to make their situation worse and to think more about their future. If the mother wants to improve her future by continuing her education, being a teenage parent is precisely the wrong way to do it. As for blaming the victim, no one is blaming the baby—yet the baby will also bear long-term consequences."

Violence and Family Breakdown - "An analysis of studies of family structure published by the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy found that 90 percent of the change in the violent crime rate between 1973 and 1995 was traceable to the rise of illegitimate births... The concentration of single-parent families can affect even those with two parents. A study of 4,671 8th graders in ten cities found that students who attended school with a large number of fatherless classmates were more likely to commit crimes even if they came from intact families themselves... In The Atlantic Monthly, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead wrote that the “relationship [between single-parent families and crime] is so strong that controlling for family configuration erases the relationship between race and crime and between low income and crime. This conclusion shows up time and again in the literature.”"

Dan Quayle Was Right - "No one would claim that two-parent families are free from conflict, violence, or abuse. However, the attempt to discredit the two-parent family can be understood as part of what Daniel Patrick Moynihan has described as a larger effort to accommodate higher levels of social deviance... Fewer than half of all adult Americans today regard the idea of sacrifice for others as a positive moral virtue... Single-mother families are vulnerable not just to poverty but to a particularly debilitating form of poverty: welfare dependency. The dependency takes two forms: First, single mothers, particularly unwed mothers, stay on welfare longer than other welfare recipients. Of those never-married mothers who receive welfare benefits, al most 40 percent remain on the rolls for ten years or longer. Second, welfare dependency tends to be passed on from one generation to the next... in 1971, Wallerstein and her colleagues set out to conduct clinical interviews with 131 children from the San Francisco area, they thought they were embarking on a short-term study. Most experts believed that divorce was like a bad cold. There was a phase of acute discomfort, and then a short recovery phase. According to the conventional wisdom, kids would be back on their feet in no time at all. Yet when Wallerstein met these children for a second interview more than a year later, she was amazed to discover that there had been no miraculous recovery. In fact, the children seemed to be doing worse... Since most children live with their mothers after divorce, one might expect that the mother-child bond would remain unaltered and might even be strengthened. Yet research shows that the mother-child bond is also weakened as the result of divorce... remarriage neither reproduces nor restores the intact family structure, even when it brings more income and a second adult into the household. Quite the contrary. Indeed, children living with stepparents appear to be even more disadvantaged than children living in a stable single-parent family... More than half of the increase in child poverty in the 1980s is attributable to changes in family structure, according to David Eggebeen and Daniel Lichter, of Pennsylvania State University... children of widows tend to do better than children of divorced or unmarried mothers"
The fact that children seem to do worse after divorce (and even worse with remarriage - despite more money [always the prescription] and help) suggests that liberals are wrong when they say divorce is good for children (despite single parent families verifiably leading to worse outcomes for children) since the parents are exiting unhealthy and unhappy marriages

Relationship Between the Welfare State and Crime - "the Maryland NAACP released a report concluding that “the ready access to a lifetime of welfare and free social service programs is a major contributory factor to the crime problems we face today”... the evidence of a link between the availability of welfare and out-of-wedlock births is overwhelming. There have been 13 major studies of the relationship between the availability of welfare benefits and out-of-wedlock birth. Of these, 11 found a statistically significant correlation... a recent study of the impact of Canada’s social-welfare system on family structure concluded that “providing additional benefits to single parents encourages births of children to unwed women”... Medicaid programs in 11 states actually provide infertility treatments to single women on welfare... welfare also appears to discourage the mother from marrying in the future. Research by Robert Hutchins of Cornell University shows that a 10 percent increase in AFDC benefits leads to an eight percent decrease in the marriage rate of single mothers... welfare culture tells the man he is not a necessary part of the family. They are in effect cuckolded by the state. Their role of father and breadwinner is supplanted by the welfare check... boys growing up in mother only families naturally seek male influences. Unfortunately, in many inner city neighborhoods, those male role models may not exist. As George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty, has noted, the typical inner-city today is “almost a matriarchy. The women receive all the income, dominate the social-worker classes, and most of the schools.” Thus, the boy in search of male guidance and companionship may end up in the company of gangs or other undesirable influences"
On the link between welfare and single parent families

'Enormous and leafy': Chinese officials flock to tree planted by Xi Jinping - "officials in Henan province decided to express their allegiance by gathering around a Paulownia tree planted by their chief back in April 2009. As the cadres, including the provincial party chief, Xie Fuzhan, gazed up at its branches on the morning of Sunday 5 November, “they were immersed in thought, filled with deep emotions”, a local propaganda report described. “The tree is big, verdant and tall,” the author of the story gushed. “[Locals] warmly call it the Xi Paulownia tree.”"

Louvre Abu Dhabi draws crowd as diverse as UAE - "The vast project prides itself ase "the first museum of its kind in the Arab world: A universal museum that focuses on shared human stories across civilisations and cultures"."
It is telling that though the Arabs are so rich, it took till 2017 for them to have a universal museum

Pearson issues apology for publishing racist theories about treating pain in nursing textbook - "Pearson, an education publishing company, apologized for publishing a nursing textbook section that contained racist material about treating patients from different cultural backgrounds who have acute and chronic pain"
It's racist to not account for cultural differences ("ethnocentrism"). But also racist to account for them, apparently

Cultural Influences on Pain Perceptions and Behaviors - "The perception of pain and behaviors associated with pain are influenced by the sociocultural contexts of the individuals experiencing pain. This article provides an overview of the literature on these cultural influences. With the increase in global migration, nurses need to develop increased sensitivity to the influence of culture on pain perceptions and behaviors"

Can My Children Be Friends With White People? - The New York Times - "Donald Trump’s election has made it clear that I will teach my boys the lesson generations old, one that I for the most part nearly escaped. I will teach them to be cautious, I will teach them suspicion, and I will teach them distrust. Much sooner than I thought I would, I will have to discuss with my boys whether they can truly be friends with white people... White faces are swept together, ominous anxiety behind every chance encounter at the airport or smiling white cashier. If they are not clearly allies, they will seem unsafe to me... Ekow N. Yankah (@ekownyankah) is a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University."
Comments: "This article saddens and sickens me. If your children do not have white friends, they are condemned to live in a segregated society. Ask the Boers how that worked out."
"White liberals you are being hustled. It’s that simple. I can assure you that the vast majority of black people aren’t obsessing over their interactions with whites nor fear that their children interact with them"
"If Liberal American and the Media truly wanted racial harmony, they would do one thing and one thing only. Stop the constant drum beat of manufactured racial discord... What cause the greatest discord are the constant reminders of America's past reaching back 150 years. If you landed here from outer space, you would think that slavery ended last week. To be a minority Black in America means you hear about this history DAILY. Movies, News, NPR, etc. It's non-stop. Were I Black, I know for a fact I'd be angry too."
"you seem to be conflating Trump voters with white people. This is after all the New York Times... They say, liberals can't be trusted, minorities can't be trusted. How is what you are doing any different?"

Game of Thrones's Carice van Houten on death threats from fans: ‘People take it too seriously’ - "When Melisandre orchestrated the burning at the stake of a young girl in season five, Carice received death threats on Twitter. ‘There are people who take it a little bit too seriously,’ she says. Later, Melisandre was shown resurrecting the show’s hero, Jon Snow (played by Kit Harington), and suddenly people were tweeting her marriage proposals instead."

Insulting the Modesty of a Woman - "These are some examples where courts have held to constitute an insult of modesty
1. Flashing one’s private parts to a woman (Ramakrishnan s/p Ramayan)
2. Threatening to spread nude photographs of a woman (Mohammed Liton)
3. Up-skirt video situations (Tay Beng Guan Albert, Soo Ee Hock) – judges held that where up-skirt videos are concerned, a fine would not be a sufficient deterrent and thus, a jail term should be imposed
4. Verbally expressing sexual desires to a woman customer service officer and asking about her sexual preferences in a derogatory manner (Chandran s/o Natesan)"

Man who had sex with 13-year-old girl on first meeting jailed 15 months - "the girl was playing catching with her school mates when the police stopped by and asked the girl if she had anything to tell them in a “completely fortuitous” moment. The prosecution sought 15 months’ jail for Ong, stating that there was a “clear element of exploitation” by Ong, as he had not been in a relationship with the girl. DPP Kavita added that the two engaged in unprotected sex, exposing the girl to the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases... Ong told the court that he has since found a girlfriend who is 20 years old, and the two have been dating for almost a year.
So he would've gotten a lower punishment if he'd used protection?

There Have Been So Many Bad Lefty Free-Speech Takes Lately - "there has emerged a subgenre of left-of-center punditry which, rather than grapple with the complicated ramifications of this reality, instead pretends difficult free-speech questions can be “resolved” by simply swapping them out for a set of different, much less interesting questions. This commentary focuses on questions like “Is Richard Spencer a bigot?” (yes) or “Is bigotry morally acceptable?” (no), and “Does Richard Spencer engage in what could be considered ‘hate speech’?” (yes). But what you never learn from reading these pieces is that none of these questions has any bearing on what a real-life public university should do when real-life Richard Spencer is scheduled to give a real-life talk. Distressingly, even academics who should know better are playing this game. An article that recently ran in Vox headlined “There is no 1st Amendment right to speak on a college campus” is a stunning example. Written by Robert C. Post, a legal scholar (!) at and former dean (!!!) of Yale Law School, the article simply doesn’t acknowledge the very real legal landscape that dictates the terms of this debate, and instead, in a woolly and morally righteous way, takes the reader on a meandering tour of various non sequiturs pertaining to Robert C. Post’s personal values and philosophy and opinions on what universities are — none of these thoughts and opinions having much to do with what a public university in the crosshairs of Spencer and his ilk might actually be able to do... Major outlets are publishing arguments nominally about free speech that don’t even have a coherent point... BLM exercised what is known as a “heckler’s veto” — disrupting an event so much that it cannot go on — and as Zach Greenberg of the campus-free-speech organization the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education explains on a page dedicated to this important concept, the courts have ruled that such vetoes do, in fact, violate the First Amendment, whether the disruption is merely verbal (as it was in this case) or physical"