Links - 31st July 2018 (2)

Sexual Abuse by Educators Is Scrutinized - "Those figures suggest that "the physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests,"contended Ms. Shakeshaft, who is a professor of educational administration at Hofstra, in Hempstead, N.Y... 9.6 percent of all students in grades 8-11 reported sexual harassment by teachers, coaches, or other school employees. That included misconduct involving physical contact as well as such behavior as sexual remarks, jokes, or gestures, with 8.7 percent of respondents reporting "noncontact" harassment and 6.7 percent reporting harassment involving physical contact."

67 New England Private Schools Accused of Covering Up Sexual Abuse - "The Globe’s Spotlight Team, which does in-depth investigative reporting, found 200-plus victims at 67 private schools, resulting in more than 90 legal claims since 1991... Perhaps most disturbing is the way school administrators let abusers move from school to school. The Globe uncovered 11 cases where teachers accused of abuse at one private school went on to work at another. Administrators often failed to alert the new school about a teacher’s past abuse, according to the Globe. That allowed some teachers to abuse children at different schools, and in different states, with impunity."

Has Media Ignored Sex Abuse In School? - "during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government's discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools."

Catholic child abuse in proportion | Andrew Brown - "the most pessimistic survey finds that 27% of American women and 16% of men had "a history of childhood sexual abuse"; while the the most optimistic had 12.8% of women and 4.3% of men... The Catholic figures show that between about 4% of priests and deacons serving in the US between 1950 and 2002 had been accused of sexual abuse of someone under 18. In this country, the figure was a 10th of that: 0.4%... half of the girls fostered in social democratic Sweden in the 50s and 60s had been abused; according to Camila Batmanghelidjh 550,000 children are reported to the social services in this country every year"

Public Esteem for Military Still High - "just 37% of Americans surveyed think the clergy make a big contribution to society... public perceptions of the military and teachers are overwhelmingly positive. Fully 78% of adults believe that members of the military contribute a lot to the well-being of society, and 72% say the same about teachers"

How Exercise Can Help You Recall Words - The New York Times

As Google Feeds Cats, Owl Lovers Cry Foul - The New York Times - "At Google, it is not so much that workers do not like birds as it is that they really love cats. There is an employee group called GCat Rescue that traps the cats around the so-called Googleplex. Kittens and friendly adults are put up for adoption. Less-friendly adult cats are neutered and released... The number of cat sightings there last year was 318, according to the City of Mountain View’s official count. And 2017 was the first time in 20 years of record-keeping that no owl fledglings were observed in the park. As recently as 2011, there were 10."

Opinion | Aristotle’s Wrongful Death - The New York Times - "The world now changes at warp speed. Colleges move glacially. By the time they’ve assembled a new cluster of practical concentrations, an even newer cluster may be called for, and a set of job-specific skills picked up today may be obsolete less than a decade down the road. The idea of college as instantaneously responsive to employers’ evolving needs is a bit of a fantasy. Eric Johnson, an education policy analyst in Chapel Hill, N.C., agrees that majors may well be “a poor way of organizing career preparation.” “But that’s because college is a poor way of organizing career preparation,” he told me. “Deep, discipline-focused learning is simply a different goal than being adequately skilled to serve mercurial employers.”... Colleges needn’t abandon majors in order to give students breadth and nimbleness. That’s what general-education requirements are for. So why don’t more colleges expand or toughen those? That would additionally help to create shared experiences and common points of reference in a dangerously fractured society... majoring in anything — is a useful retort to the infinite distractions, short attention spans and staccato communications of the smartphone era. Perhaps now, more than ever, young people need to be shown the rewards of sustained attention and taught how to hold a thought. That’s what a major does. There’s a reason that it’s often called a discipline."

A Real-Life Enchanted Forest - The New York Times - "IN ORDER TO see one of the oldest living trees on earth in one of the oldest evergreen forests in the world, you must first fly two hours from Tokyo to the town of Kagoshima on Kyushu"

Why Hispanic-Americans live longer: The mystery that has puzzled researchers for decades - The Washington Post - "In the United States, Hispanics die at slower rates than non-Hispanic whites. This is true even before accounting for differences in incomes and health-care access, which put Hispanics at a disadvantage... Markides speculated that Hispanic culture may have some protective effect. Tight-knit families and immigrant communities offer crucial support to people battling illnesses. Hispanics, especially recent immigrants, also tend to behave in more healthy ways, smoking and drinking less. This may explain why second- and third-generation Hispanics, who are more plugged into the mainstream culture, see less of a boost to their health."
Hispanic privilege

Nation of shoplifters: the rise of supermarket self-checkout scams - "Few would steal from an individual grocer. But from a multinational conglomerate? What difference does it make? “There’s a mountain of good socio-cognitive criminological research that explains this under the heading of Neutralisation Theory,” says Shadd Maruna, a criminology professor at the University of Manchester. I’d asked him to take me through the psychology of self-checkout theft, to help me get to grips with the “why”. “Individuals can neutralise guilt they might otherwise feel when stealing by telling themselves that there are no victims of the crime, no human being is actually being hurt by this, only some mega-corporation that can surely afford the loss of a few quid. In fact, the corporation has saved so much money by laying off all its cashiers that it is almost morally necessary to steal from them.”"

BioWare's David Crooks Mocks TotalBiscuit's Death After YouTuber Dies Of Cancer - "Mass Effect: Andromeda programmer, David Crooks, decided to quickly hop on the opportunity to mock and deride John “TotalBiscuit” Bain an hour after he died in a losing battle to terminal cancer... Various others within the Social Justice Warrior community are also mocking the YouTuber after the 33-year-old died to cancer... 'These are the same types of people who claim to want to stop online abuse and harassment. But the reality is that they don’t want to stop bullying, they just want to feel morally superior as they bully others. They’re amoral frauds.'... Electronic Arts, DICE, and BioWare have been courting those kind of people above – attempting to cater their games toward so-called “progressives” who have no qualms with bullying those who suffer from terminal cancer."

Hainanese chicken rice may be nature's one perfect dish - "Hainanese chicken rice can be found in most major U.S. cities, and with its simple cooking method, it’s not too difficult to make the dish at home as well. There’s only one problem—most American chickens are bred for size, and as such, taste comparatively bland and flavorless compared to its Southeast Asian counterparts. It’s the superior breed of chicken, plus its method of preparation accentuating those flavors, that makes Hainanese chicken rice in Singapore and Malaysia the apotheosis of chicken dishes—maybe worldwide"

Singaporeans on Tumblr Are Turning Instagram Girls Into Pornstars - "Out of the girls I approach, three aren’t interested in discussing the subject, one ignores me completely, and two say that they’re busy, giving one liners congratulating the men on their imagination. They even add that they aren’t affected so long as it doesn’t ruin their dignity... “I think these girls need to calm the fuck down. The only difference between me memorising your face/body and looking at your picture while touching myself, is a visual reminder that YOU put out there.” As we end our chat, Leon leaves me with something else to think about when he postulates that the girls who’ve had their photos shared to these “porn Tumblrs” may not mind as much as they claim to, adding that they might even be secretly pleased about it. “No girl has ever complained about having more followers what,” he finishes.""

Race in biology and anthropology: A study of college texts and professors - "67% of biologists accept the concept of biological races in the species Homo sapiens, while only 50% of physical anthropologists do so"
Amusingly the authors think they know better than a majority of biologists and a pluralist of physical anthropologists
Of course views will have changed since 1992, given the present hostile climate

Women's college instructs professors not to call students 'women' - "Professors are instructed to say “Mount Holyoke students” instead of “Mount Holyoke women,” as well as avoiding statements like “We’re all women here…” or referring to “the two genders” as part of a Teaching & Learning Initiative... Yet, on the school's website, it says, “Imagine if every day were International Women’s Day. Meet Mount Holyoke,” and also boasts of being founded “by a woman!” in 1837."

Stanford Professor: Dungeons and Dragons Perpetuates Systems of White, Male Privilege - "Standford University Professor Antero Garcia argues in an academic journal article that the popular game Dungeons and Dragons perpetuates systems of privilege... Garcia’s 16-page article focuses on the representation of women in the game. According to Garica’s research, by 2014, more than half of the game’s depicted characters are female."

University Police are Surveilling Student Social Media Accounts for 'Campus Safety' - "A report from Campus Safety Magazine revealed that the University of Virginia spends $18,500 per year on monitoring the social media accounts of their students. The university retained a firm called Social Sentinel, which uses software to monitor social media accounts for schools and corporations."

Farage: Soros and Allies Engaged in 'The Biggest Level of International Political Collusion in History' - "Speaking in a debate on the Paradise Papers in the European Parliament, the UKIP MEP pointed out that the financier had funded the exposé. “I say this at a time when the use of money and the influence it may have had on the Brexit result or the Trump election has reached a level of virtual hysteria,” he said. “Just last week the Electoral Commission in the UK launched an investigation to find out whether the Leave campaign took offshore money or Russian money. “This came about as a result of questions asked in the House of Commons by one Ben Bradshaw, somebody linked to an organisation called Open Society. “I just wonder when we’re talking about offshore money, when we’re talking about political subversion, when we’re talking about collusion, I wonder whether we’re looking in the wrong place. “And I say that because George Soros recently gave Open Society, his organisation, which of course campaigns for free movement of peoples and supports supranational structures like the European Union, he recently gave it 18 billion dollars."

After Anal Rape, Left Wing Activist Felt 'Guilt And Responsibility' His Migrant Attacker Was Deported - "An active member of the Norwegian Socialist Left Party (SV) who described himself as an ardent “feminist and anti-racist” explained the difficulty he experienced accepting that he had been anally raped by a male migrant. He said he didn’t blame the man for the attack, and regretted the fact he had been sent back to Somalia. Describing the process of reconciling his personally held beliefs, young SV activist Karsten Nordal Hauken said the experience left him “feeling nothing”... Mr. Hauken found himself unable to blame his attacker, saying “he is not responsible for his actions”. Rather than the rapist being in charge of his own destiny, he said he was merely “a product of an unjust world. A product of an upbringing marked by war and deprivation”, and said that rather than the attack being sexually motivated, it was all about “exerting power” over him. The attack had not in any way dulled his left-wing politics, either. Mr. Hauken said: “I stand rock solid in my opinion that people like him need our help. I want us to continue to help refugees with such a background… For I am a human being first, and not a Norwegian. No, I’m part of the world, and the world is unfortunately unfair”."

‘It Makes Me Very Sad’ Says Open Borders Activist Brutally Stabbed by Migrant Gang - "Despite the apparently random violent attack by the migrants, the activist was adamant the stabbing shouldn’t be used for political ends."

Princeton protesters occupy president’s office, demand ‘racist’ Woodrow Wilson’s name be removed - The Washington Post - "it’s a movement that has also generated opposition — as at Dartmouth, where some students reported being frightened by protesters screaming and swearing at them about being racists last week, at Yale where a debate about free speech clashed with demands from students angry about the racial climate on campus, at Claremont McKenna College where some students said protests turned hostile, and in a few places such as the University of Missouri and Howard, with racist death threats... The group demanded that the name of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th U.S. president, a segregationist who some believe supported the ideas of the Ku Klux Klan, be removed from a residential college, from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy and International Affairs, and any other buildings — and that his mural be scrubbed from the dining hall.
Once you have paid him the Dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane

NYT: Justice Scalia Artfully Explained Flip-Flop on Appeals - "First, "issue a forthright admission" of error. After fellow Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg accused him of changing his position on whether the court could hear certain kinds of appeals, Scalia admitted that her "stinging observation" was correct. Second, the Times said, "support the confession with a classy quotation from another Supreme Court Justice who once had to explain an about face." Scalia chose Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served on the court from 1941 to 1954 and was known for his extraordinary writing skills and self-deprecating candor. Third, "return fire." Scalia noted that a few months earlier, Ginsburg had shifted her position and used the identical quotation from Jackson."

First woman to join infantry regiment quits after two weeks - "The recruit dropped out of an 18-week course this month after falling behind her male counterparts on endurance marches and failing other physical tests at a training base in Suffolk. It is understood that when the woman resigned, she admitted having underestimated the physical requirements of being an infantry recruit. She also told officers that living in female-only accommodation made her feel ‘like an outsider’ and weakened her resolve. Her resignation is a huge blow to officials who are determined to integrate women into fighting units in the Army, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force... She is understood to have been one of just three women who applied to join the RAF Regiment and the only one considered fit enough to start the course at RAF Honington alongside 44 men."
Stereotypes!

At Midnight in Golden Mile Tower, Girls and Ghosts Come Out to Play

One Night With A Transgender Sex Worker - "She shares that she used to be an escort, but is now a streetwalker as she’s in the process of ‘rebranding’ herself. When this is done, she’ll go back to escorting, where she provides the ‘girlfriend experience’, and will also be paid more for a higher quality of service... “Some clients want you to get hard, some of them want you to come. Because I still have a dick, I can only come what, at most twice one night? And all this not even considering whether I find the client attractive or not. If it’s a nice good looking Caucasian man, maybe not so bad. But it’s not always the case.”"